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_http://www.archive.org/details/clscfrenchcourseOOwilkiala 





BOOKS BY WILLIAM CLEAVER WILKINSON. 





PREPARATORY GREEK COURSE IN ENGLISH... <oepesuace $1 00 
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The Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle. 


STUDIES FOR 1890-91, 


An Outing History OF ENGLAND, JOy.......c.cccccescccscvcesssteceescuees $x 
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CLASSIC 


PRENCH COURSE 


~ 


IN ENGLISH. 


BY 


- WILLIAM CLEAVER [WILKINSON, 





Pit YORK: 
We AUQUA PRESS, 
c. L. S. C. Department, 


150 Fifth Avenue, 
1890. 


The required books of the C. L. S. C. are recommended by a Council 
of Six. It must, however, be understood that recommendation does not 
involve an approval by the Council, or by any member of it, of every 
principle or doctrine contained in the book recommended. 


Copyright, 1890, by Hunr & Earon, 150 Fifth Avenue, New York, 





PQ 

119 

Wore 
1$4O 


PR EB EP AaGee 





Tue preparation of the present volume proposed to the 
author a task more difficult far than that undertaken in either 
of the two volumes chronologically preceding it in the group, 
Tue Arrer-Scuoor SErtEs, to which it belongs. Those vol- 
umes dealt with literatures limited and finished; this volume 
deals with a literature indefinitely vast in extent, and still in 
vital process of growth. The selection of material to be used 
was, in the case of the earlier volumes, virtually made for 
the author beforehand, in a manner greatly to ease his sense 
of responsibility for the exercise of individual judgment and 
taste. Long prescription, joined to the winnowing effect of 
wear and waste through time and chance, had left little doubt 
what works of what writers, Greek ae Roman, best de- 
served now to be shown to the general reader. Badides this, 
the prevalent custom of the schools of classical learning 
could then wisely be taken as a clew of guidance to be im- 
plicitly followed, whatever might be the path through which 
it should lead. There is here no similar avoidance of respon- 
sibility possible ; for the schools have not established a cus- 
tom, and French literature is a living body, from which no 
important members have ever yet been rent by the ravages 
of time. 

The plan of this volume, together with the compass pro- 
posed for it, created the necessity of establishing from the 
outset certain limits to be very strictly observed. There 
could be no introductory general matter, beyond a rapid and 
summary review of that literature, as a whole, which is the 
subject of the book. The list of authors selected for represen- 
tation must not include the names of any still living. A 
third thing resolved upon was to make the number of repre- 


1563098 


6 Classic French Course in English. 





sentative names small rather than large, choice rather than 
inclusive. The principle at this point adopted was to choose 
those authors only whose merit, or whose fame, or whose in- 
fluence, might be supposed unquestionably such that their 
names and their works would certainly be found surviving, 
though the language in which they wrote should, like its pa- 
rent Latin, have perished from the tongues of men. The 
proportion of space severally allotted to the different authors 
was to be measured partly according to their relative impor- 
tance, and partly according to their estimated relative capac- 
ity of interesting in translation the average intelligent reader 
of to-day. 

In one word, the single inspiring aim of the author has 
here been to furnish enlightened readers, versed only in the 
English language, the means of acquiring, through the me- 
dium of their vernacular, some proportioned, trustworthy, 
and effective knowledge and appreciation, in its chief classics, 
of the great literature which has been written in French. 
This object has been sought, not through narrative and de- 
scription, making books and authors the subject, but through 
the literature itself, in specimen extracts illuminated by the 
necessary explanation and criticism. 

It is proper to explain that this book expands to dimen- 
sions about one half greater a book formerly presented to the 
public by the same author under the same title. Additional 
matter has been introduced, in many places, into the text of 
the smaller original volume; and, besides this, a the nine- 
teenth-century names given here are features new in the 
present edition. 

The changes thus made render this volume uniform in 
scope and size with a volume by the same author devoted to 
German literature. 


CONTENTS. 





Au 
FRENCH LITERATURE .........00000. we kas ASE Ee Par A Pale nde 
IL. 
FROSSART 6685 oa ESS Se CRATES Sere Oiaaty pas See Siatneeere ace 
IIL. 
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Vi 
La RocHEroucauLp (LA BRUYERE; VAUVENARGUES) ..........+.55 
VI. 
LA FONTAINE.... ..0..5- Mi rae: eiaas ie wearae doae Pia Sse wide Whale Pie Wie clare y 
VII. 
MOLIERE...... Balbo alacbarR BCeal Gia a habaec RG eLseaa Sia AC ry see tha de irevataaease 
VIII. 
PASCAL..... Ee a ts, Peon Raa we kre Sate’ pele cite oe oceras ow re! 
IX. 
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22 


29 


40 


55 


66 


91 


127 


8 Contents, 





XII. PAGE 
BossuEt, BOURDALOUE, MASSILLON, SAURIN .......0000. ee eee aaetaa, ae 


PENELON Seis: s 0 ethic Sores aioe o@bete fia cio ost ats Sate 5 a ae wee he ince HOO 


MONTESQUIEU, DE TOCQUEVILLE.......... 2... aS sine teicigg Risa Beye ire 184 
WOLTAIRB. ...c000000 Se a ae ie tele ners lake Rigtershisew ae Noa Sats oe vacoy 19D 
ROvusseat(St.: PIERRE) 26 5.0 ccc ases ewes Sees Shodicals Wat wala an nae 212 


THE ENCYCLOPEXDISTS.......... te Ari rie ort ean aS igs ee ee 235 


MADAME DE STAEL......... Pmt SORE of Eg TA, ak RO eR eS ae Wr Tr 239 


CRATER UDRIAWIN: 55 idioreecisve eth adie sae Wis omibialore ecaiattaha ce fem Ripee . 248 


REN RGME pais aid inde i-o's'a Dae ied Sis fends aie wi) ETRE PORE ee RN, eg WORE eae 368 
RMA RIGM A sigraw els:eic 2 0b. 050.2 ado pieledie iS tern Riataty ane 1d ial dw a alaealbts Sete 


THE Group or 1830....... Nesiadiesiins svnaisinoanae « o winse teste he ne, 860-0 Oe 
XXIV. 

DOUSERT (BWETCHINE: AMIEL) 6.006. i:c ccc ccvansse santas ccuens ieee SOF: 

BEPIGQGUR: i oicis'cic sacs cet vesiécinsees BP eet eee ee ettve'e laws DES 


THDEX 344 0e33 > ON ete Seas oh Peau he eet CESANERR ES Ae) see akseste es CRED 


£7 


CLASSIC FRENCH COURSE IN ENGLISH. 


———_++4 





\e 
FRENCH LITERATURE. 


Or French literature, taken as a whole, it may boldly be 
said that it is, not the wisest, not the weightiest, not certain- 
ly the purest and loftiest, but by odds the most brilliant and 
the most interesting, literature in the world. Strong at 
many points, at some points triumphantly strong, it is con- 
spicuously weak at only one point,—the important point of 
poetry. In eloquence, in philosophy, even in theology ; in 
history, in fiction, in criticism, in epistolary writing, in 
what may be called the pamphlet ; in another species of 
composition, characteristically, peculiarly, almost uniquely, 
French—the Thought and the Maxim; by eminence in 
comedy, and in all those related modes of written expres- 
sion for which there is scarcely any name but a French 
name—the jew Wesprit, the bon mot, persiflage, the phrase ; 
in social and political speculation ; last, but not least, in 
scientific exposition elegant enough in form and in style to 
rise to the rank of literature proper—the French language 
has abundant achievement to show, that puts it, upon the 
whole, hardly second in wealth of letters to any other lan- 
guage whatever, either ancient or modern. 

What constitutes the charm—partly a perilous charm—of 
French literature is before all else its incomparable clear- 
ness, its precision, its neatness, its point; then, added to 
this, its lightness of touch, its sureness of aim; its vivacity, 
sparkle, life ; its inexhaustible gayety ; its impulsion toward 


wit—impulsion so strong as often to land it in mockery ; the 
1* 


10 Classic French Course in English. 





sense of release that it breathes and inspires; its freedom 
from prick to the conscience ; its exquisite study and choice 
of effect; its deference paid to deqorum—decorum, we 
mean, in taste, as distinguished from morals ; its infinite pa- 
tience and labor of art, achieving the perfection of grace 
and of ease—in one word, its style. 

We speak, of course, broadly and in the gross. There are 
plenty of French authors to whom some of the traits just 
named could by no means be attributed, and there is certain- 
ly not a single French author to whom one could truthfully 
attribute them all. Voltaire insisted that what was not 
clear was not French—so much, to the conception of this 
typical Frenchman, was clearness the genius of the national 
speech. Still, Montaigne, for example, was sometimes ob- 
scure ; and even the tragedist Corneille wrote here and there 
what his commentator, Voltaire, declared to be hardly intel- 
ligible. So, too, Rabelais, coarsest of humorists, offending — 
decorum in various ways, offended it most of all exactly in 
that article of taste, as distinguished from morals, which, 
with first-rate French authors in general, is so capital a point 
of regard. On the other hand, Pascal—not to mention the 
moralists by profession, such as Nicole, and the preachers 
Bourdaloue and Massillon—Pascal, quivering himself, like a 
soul unclad, with sense of responsibility to God, constantly 
probes you, reading him, to the inmost quick of your con- 
science, Rousseau, notably in the “Confessions,” and in the 
“‘Reveries” supplementary to the “ Confessions;” Chateau- 
briand, echoing Rousseau; and that wayward woman of genius, 
George Sand, disciple she to both—were so far from being 
always light-heartedly gay, that not seldom they spread over 
their page a somber atmosphere almost of gloom—gloom 
flushed pensively, as with a clouded “setting sun’s pathetic 
light.” In short, when you speak of particular authors, and 
naturally still more when you speak of particular works, 
there are many discriminations to be made. Such exceptions, 
however, being duly allowed, the literary product of the 
French mind, considered in the aggregate, will not be mis- 


French Literature. 11 





conceived if regarded as possessing the geyeral characteris- 
tics in style that we have now sought briefly to indicate. 

French literature, we have hinted, is comparatively poor 
in poetry. This is due in part, no doubt, to the genius of 
the people ; but it is also due in part to the structure of the 
language. The language, which is derived chiefly from 
Latin, is thence in such a way derived as to have lost the 
regularity and stateliness of its ancient original, without hay- 
ing compensated itself with any richness and sweetness of 
sound peculiarly its own ; like, for instance, that canorous 
vowel quality of its sister derivative, the Italian. The 
French language, in short, is far from being an ideal lan- 
guage for the poet. 

In spite, however, of this fact, disputed by nobody, it is 
true of French literature, as it is true of almost any national 
literature, that it took its rise in verse instead of in prose. 
Anciently there were two languages subsisting together in 
France which came to be distinguished from each other in 
name by the word of affirmation—oe or oil, yes—severally 
peculiar to them, and thus to be known respectively as 
langue @oc and langue @oil. The future belonged to the 
latter of the two forms of speech—the one spoken in the 
northern part of the country. This, the Jangue @oil, became 
at length the French language. But the langue @oc, a soft 
and musical tongue, survived long enough to become the ve- 
hicle of lyric strains, mostly on subjects of love and gallant- 
ry, still familiar in mention, and famous as the songs of the 
troubadours. The flourishing time of the troubadours was — 
in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Provengal is an al- 
ternative name of the language. 

Side by side with the southern trowbadours, or a little 
later than they, the trowvéres of the north sang, with more 
manly ambition, of national themes, and, like Virgil, of arms 
and of heroes. Some productions of the trowvéres may fairly 
be allowed an elevation of aim and of treatment entitling 
them to be called epic in character. Chansons de geste (songs 
of exploit), or romans, is the native name by which those 


12 Classic French Course in English. 





primitive French poems are known. They exist in three 
principal cycles, or groups, of productions—one cycle com- 
posed of those pertaining to Charlemagne ; one, of those 
pertaining to British Arthur, and a third, of those pertain- 
ing to ancient Greece and Rome, notably to Alexander the 
Great. The cycle revolving around the majestic legend of 
Charlemagne for its center was Teutonic, rather than Celtic, 
in spirit as well as in theme. It tended to the religious in 
tone. The Arthurian cycle was properly Celtic. It dealt 
more with adventures of love. The Alexandrian cycle, so 
named from one principal theme celebrated—namely, the 
deeds of Alexander the Great—mixed fantastically the tra- 
ditions of ancient Greece and Rome with the then prevailing 
ideas of chivalry, and with the figments of fairy lore. (The 
metrical form employed in these poems gave its name to the 
Alexandrine line later so predominant in French poetry.) 
The volume of this quasi-epical verse, existing in its three 
groups, or cycles, is immense. So is that of the satire and 
the allegory in meter that followed. From this latter store 
of stock and example, Chaucer drew to supply his muse with 
material. The fadbliawx, so called—fables, that is, or stories 
—were still another form of French literature in verse. It is 
only now, within the current decade of years, that a really 
ample collection of fabliaua—hitherto, with the exception of 
a few printed volumes of specimens, extant exclusively in 
manuscript—has been put into course of publication. Rute- 
beuf, a trowvére of the reign of St. Louis (Louis IX., thir- 
teenth century), is perhaps as conspicuous a personal name 
as any that thus far emerges out of the sea of practically 
anonymous early French authorship. A frankly sordid and 
mercenary singer, Rutebeuf, always tending to mockery, was 
not seldom licentious—in both these respects anticipating, 
as probably also to some extent by example conforming, the 
subsequent literary spirit of his nation. The fadliawxe gener- 
ally mingled with their narrative interest that spice of rail- 
lery and satire constantly so dear to the French literary appe- 
tite. Thibaud was, in a double sense, a royal singer of 


French Literature. 13 





songs; for he reigned over Navarre, as well as chanted 
sweetly in verse his love and longing, so the disputed legend 
asserts, for Queen Blanche of Castile. Thibaud bears the 
historic title of The Song-maker. He has been styled the 
Béranger of the thirteenth century. To Thibaud is said to 
be due the introduction of the feminine rhyme into French 
poetry—a metrical variation of capital importance. The 
songs of Abélard, in the century preceding Thibaud, won a 
wide popularity. 

Prose, meantime, had been making noteworthy approaches 
to form, Villehardouin must be named as first in time 
among French writers of history. His work is entitled, 
“Conquest of Constantinople.” It gives an account of the 
fourth crusade. Joinville, a generation later, continues the 
succession of chronicles with his admiring story of the life 
of St. Louis, whose personal friend he was. But Froissart 
of the fourteenth century, and Comines of the fifteenth, are 
greater names. Froissart, by his simplicity and his narra- 
tive art, was the Herodotus, as Philip de Comines, for his 
political sagacity, has been styled the Tacitus, of French his- 
torical literature. Up to the time of Froissart, the literature 
which we have been treating as French was different enough 
in form from the French of to-day to require what might be 
called translation in order to become generally intelligible 
to the living generation of Frenchmen. The text of Frois- 
sart is pretty archaic, but it definitely bears the aspect of 
French. 

With the name of Comines, who wrote of Louis XI. (com- 
pare- Walter Scott’s “Quentin Durward”), we reach the fif- 
teenth century, and we close upon the great revival of learn- 
ing which accompanied the religious reformation under 
Luther and his peers. Now come Rabelais, boldly declared 
by Coleridge one of the great creative minds of literature ; 
and Montaigne, with those essays of his, still living, and, in- 
deed, certain always to live. John Calvin, meantime, writes 
his “Institutes of the Christian Religion” in French as well 
as in Latin, showing, once and for all, that in the right hands 


14 Classic French Course in English. 





his vernacular tongue was as capable of gravity as many a 
writer before him had superfluously shown that it was 
capable of levity. Amyot, the translator of Plutarch, is a 
French writer of power, without whom the far greater 
Montaigne could hardly have been. The influence of Amyot 
on French literary history is wider in reach and longer in 
duration than we thus indicate; but Montaigne’s indebted- 
ness to him is alone enough to prove that a mere translator 
had in this man made a very important contribution to the 
forming prose literature of France. 

“The Pleiades,” so called, were a group of seven writers, 
who, about the middle of the sixteenth century, banded 
themselves together in France, with the express aim of sup- 
plying influential example to improve the French language 
for literary purposes. Their peculiar appellation, “The 
Pleiades,” was copied from that of a somewhat similar group 
of Greek writers that existed in the time of Ptolemy Phila- 
delphus. Of course, the implied allusion in it is to the con- 
stellation of the Pleiades. The individual name by which 
the “Pleiades” of the sixteenth century may best be remem- 
bered is that of Ronsard, the poet, associated with the 
romantic and pathetic memory of Mary Queen of Scots. 
Never, perhaps, in the history of letters was the fame of a 
poet in the poet’s own life-time more universal and more 
splendid than was the fame of Ronsard. <A high court of 
literary judicature formally decreed to Ronsard the title of 
The French Poet by eminence. This occurred in the youth 
of the poet. The wine of success so brilliant turned the 
young fellow’s head. He soon began to play lord para- 
mount of Parnassus, with every air of one born to the purple. 
The kings of the earth vied with each other to do him 
honor. MRonsard affected scholarship, and the foremost 
scholars of his time were proud to place him with Homer 
and with Virgil on the roll of the poets. Ronsard’s peculiarity 
in style was the free use of words and constructions not 
properly French. Boileau indicated whence he enriched his 
vocabulary and his syntax, by satirically saying that Ron- 


French Literature. 15 





sard spoke Greek and Latin in French. At his death, 
Ronsard was almost literally buried under praises. Sainte- 
Beuve strikingly says that he seemed to go forward into 
posterity as into a temple. 

Sharp posthumous reprisals awaited the extravagant fame 
of Ronsard. Malherbe, coming in the next generation, 
legislator of Parnassus, laughed the literary pretensions of 
Ronsard to scorn. This stern critic of form, such is the 
story, marked up his copy of Ronsard with notes of censure 
so many, that a friend of his, seeing the annotated volume, 
observed, “ What here is not marked will be understood to - 
have been approved by you.” Whereupon Malherbe, tak- 
ing his pen, with one indiscriminate stroke drew it abruptly 
through the whole volume. “There I Ronsardized,” the con- 
temptuous critic would exclaim, when in reading his own 
verses to an acquaintance—for Malherbe was a poet himself— 
he happened to encounter a word that struck him as harsh or 
improper. Malherbe, in short, sought to chasten and check 
the luxuriant overgrowth to which the example and method 
of the Pleiades were tending to push the language of poetry 
in French, The resultant effect of the two contrary tenden- 
cies—that of literary wantonness on the one hand, and that 
of literary prudery on the other—was at the same time to 
enrich and to purify French poetical diction. Balzac (the 
elder), close to Malherbe in time, performed a service for 
French prose similar to that which the latter performed for 
French verse. These two critical and literary powers 
brought in the reign of what is called classicism in France. 
French classicism had its long culmination under Louis XIV. 

But it was under Louis XIIL., or rather under that mon- 
arch’s great minister, Cardinal Richelieu, that the rich and 
splendid Augustan age of French literature was truly pre- 
pared. T'wo organized forces, one of them private and 
social, the other official and public, worked together, though 
sometimes perhaps not in harmony, to produce the magnif- 
icent literary result that illustrated the time of Louis XIV. 
Of these two organized forces the Hotel de Rambouillet was 


16 Classic French Course in English. 


+ 





one, and the French Academy was the other. The Hotel de 
Rambouillet has become the adopted name of a literary 
society, presided over by the fine inspiring genius of the 
beautiful and accomplished Italian wife of the Marquis de 
Rambouillet, a lady who generously conceived the idea of 
rallying the feminine wit and virtue of the kingdom to exert 
a potent influence for regenerating the manners and morals, 
and indeed the literature, of France. At the high court of 
blended rank and fashion and beauty and polish and virtue 
and wit, thus established in the exquisitely builded and 
decorated saloons of the Rambouillet mansion, the selectest 
literary genius and fame of France were proud and glad to 
assemble for the discussion and criticism of literature. Here 
came Balzac and Voiture; here Corneille read aloud his mas- 
terpieces before they were represented on the stage ; here 
Descartes philosophized ; here the large and splendid genius 
of Bossuet first unfolded itself to the world; here Madame 
de Sévigné brought her bright, incisive wit, trebly com- 
mended by stainless reputation, unwithering beauty, and 
charming address, in the woman who wielded it. The no- 
blest blood of France added the decoration and inspiration 
of their presence. Itis not easy to overrate the diffuse benef- 
icent influence that hence went forth to change the fashion 
of literature, and to change the fashion of society, for the 
better. The Hotel de Rambouillet proper lasted two genera- 
tions only ; but it had a virtual succession, which, though 
sometimes interrupted, was scarcely extinct until the brill- 
iant and beautiful Madame Récamier ceased, about the mid- 
dle of the present century, to hold her famous salons in 
Paris. The continuous fame and influence of the French 
Academy, founded by Richelieu, everybody knows. No 
other European language has been elaborately and sedulously 
formed and cultivated like the French, 

But great authors are better improvers of a language than 
any societies, however influential. Corneille, Descartes, 
Pascal, did more for French style than either the Hétel de 
Rambouillet or the Academy—more than both these two 


a’ 
se 


French Literature. 17 





great literary societies together. In verse, Racine, follow- 
ing Corneille, advanced in some important respects upon the 
example and lead of that great original master ; but in prose, 
when Pascal published his “ Provincial Letters,” French style 
reached at once a point of perfection beyond which it never 
since has gone. Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Fénelon, Massillon, 
Moliére, La Fontaine, Boileau, La Rochefoucauld, La Bru- 
yére—what a constellation of names are these to glorify the 
age of Louis XIV.! And Louis XIV. himself, royal embodi- 
ment of a literary good sense carried to the pitch of some- 
thing very like real genius in judgment and taste—what a 
sun was he (with that talent of his for kingship, probably 
never surpassed), to balance and to sway, from his unshaken 
station, the august intellectual system of which he alone con- 
stituted the despotic center to attract and repel! Seventy- 
two years long was this sole individual reign. Louis XIV. 
still sat on the throne of France when the seventeenth 
century became the eighteenth. 

The eighteenth century was an age of universal reaction 
in France. Religion, or rather ecclesiasticism—for, in the 
France of those times, religion was the Church, and the 
Church was the Roman Catholic hierarchy—had been the 
dominant fashion under Louis XIV. Infidelity was a broad 
literary mark, written all over the face of the eighteenth cent- 
ury. It was the hour and power of the Encyclopdists and 
the Philosophers—of Voltaire, of Diderot, of D’Alembert, 
of Rousseau. Montesquieu, though contemporary, belongs 
apart from these writers. More really original, more truly 
philosophical, he was far less revolutionary, far less destruct- 
ive, than they. Still, his influence was, on the whole, exerted 
in the direction, if not of infidelity, at least of religious in- 
differentism. The French Revolution was laid in train by 
the great popular writers whom we have now named, and by 
their fellows. It needed only the spark, which the proper 
occasion would be sure soon to strike out, and the awful 
earthshaking explosion would follow. After the Revolution, 
during the First Empire, so called—the usurpation, that is, of 


18 Classic French Course in English. 





- Napoleon Bonaparte—literature was well-nigh extinguished 
in France. The names, however, then surpassingly brilliant, 
of Chateaubriand and Madame de Staél, belong to this 
period. 

Three centuries have now elapsed since the date of “The 
Pleiades.” Throughout this long period, French literature 
has been chiefly under the sway of that spirit of classicism in 
style which the reaction against Ronsardism, led first by 
Malherbe and afterward by Boileau, had established as the 
national standard in literary taste and aspiration. But Rous- 
seau’s genius acted as a powerful solvent of the classic 
tradition. Chateaubriand’s influence was felt on the same 
side, continuing Rousseau’s. George Sand, too, and Lamar- 
tine, were forces that strengthened this component. Finally, 
the great personality of Victor Hugo proved potent enough 
definitively to break the spell that had been solong and so 
heavily laid on the literary development of France. The 
bloodless warfare was fierce between the revolutionary Ro- 
manticists and the conservative Classicists in literary style, 
but the victory seemed at last to remain with the advocates 
of the new romantic revival. It looked, on the face of 
the matter, like a signal triumph of originality over 
prescription, of genius over criticism, of power over rule. 
We still live in the midst of the dying echoes of this resonant 
_ strife. Perhaps it is too early, as yet, to determine on which 
side, by the merit of the cause, the advantage truly belongs. 
But, by the merit of the respective champions, the result was, 
for a time at least, triumphantly decided in favor of the 
Romanticists, against the Classicists. The weighty authority, 
however, of Sainte-Beuve, at first thrown into the scale that 
was destined to sink, was thence withdrawn, and at last, if 
not resolutely cast upon the opposite side of the balance, was 
left wavering in a kind of equipoise between the one and the 
other, 

But our preliminary sketch already reaches the limit within 
which our choice of authors for representation is necessarily 
confined, 


French Literature. ee | 





With first a few remarks, naturally suggested, that may 
be useful, on the general subject thus rather touched merely 
than handled, the present writer gives way to let now the 
representative authors themselvés, selected for the purpose, 
supply to the reader a just and lively idea of French litera- 
ture. 

The first thing, perhaps, to strike the thoughtful mind in a 
comprehensive view of the subject is not so much the length 
—though this is remarkable—as the long continuity of French 
literary history. From its beginning down to the actual mo- 
ment, French literature has suffered no serious break in the 
course of its development. There have been periods of great- 
er and periods of less prosperity and fruit; but wastes of 
marked suspension and barrenness there have been none. 

The second thing noticeable is, that French literature has, 
to a singular degree, lived an independent life of its own. It 
has found copious springs of health and growth within its 
own bosom. 

But then a third thing to be also observed is that, on the 
other hand, the touch of foreign influence, felt and acknowl- 
edged by this most proudly and self-sufficiently national of 
literatures, has proved to it, at various epochs, a sovereign 
force of revival and elastic expansion. Thus, the great 
renascence in the sixteenth century of ancient Greek and 
Latin letters was new life to French literature. So, again, 
Spanish literature, brought into contact with French through 
Corneille and Moliére, with others, gave to the national mind 
of France a new literary launch. But the most recent and 
perhaps the most remarkable example of foreign influence 
quickening French literature to make it freshly fruitful is 
supplied in the great romanticizing movement under the lead 
of Victor Hugo. English literature—especially Shakespeare— 
was largely the pregnant cause of this attempted emancipation 
of the French literary mind from the burden of classicism. 

A fourth very salient trait in French literary history con- 
sists in the self-conscious, elaborate, persistent efforts put 
forth from time to time by individuals, and by organizations, 


20 — Classic French Course in English. 





_both public and private, in France, to improve the language 
and to elevate the literature of the nation. We know of 
nothing altogether comparable to this anywhere else in the 
literature of the world. 

A fifth striking thing about French literature is, that it has, 
toa degree as we believe beyond parallel, exercised a real 
and vital influence on the character and the fortune of the 
nation. The social, the political, the moral, the religious, 
history of France is from age to age a faithful reflex of the 
changing phases of its literature. Of course, a reciprocal in- 
fluence has been constantly reflected back and forth from the 
nation upon its literature, as well as from its literature upon 
the nation. But where else in the world has it ever been 
so extraordinarily, we may say so appallingly, true as in 
France, that the nation was such because such was its litera- 
ture ? 

French literature, it will at once be seen, is a study pos- 
sessing, beyond the literary, a social, a political, and even a 
religious, interest. 

Readers desiring to push their conversance with the literary 
history of France further into the catalogue of its less im- 
portant names than the present volume will enable them to 

_ do will consult with profit either the Primer, or the Short 
History, of French Literature, by Mr. George Saintsbury. 
Mr. Saintsbury is a well-informed writer, who diffuses him- 
self perhaps too widely to do his best possible work. But 
he has made French literature a specialty, and he is in gen- 
eral a trustworthy authority on the subject. 

Another writer on the subject is Mr. H. Van Laun. Him, 
although a predecessor of his own in the field, Mr. Saints- 
bury severely ignores, by claiming that he is himself the first 
to write in English a history of French literature based on 
original and independent reading of the authors. We are 
bound to say that Mr. Van Laun’s work is of very poor 
quality. It offers, indeed, to the reader one advantage not 
afforded by either of Mr, Saintsbury’s works—the advantage, 
namely, of illustrative extracts from the authors treated ; 


French Literature. 2] 





extracts, however, not unfrequently marred by wretched 
translation. 

A noteworthy book of the year 1889 is “A History of 
French Literature” by Charles Woodward Hutson, Pro- 
fessor of Modern Languages in the University of Mississippi. 
This is an intelligent, well-studied, well-written, carefully con- 
scientious, comprehensive account of French letters from the 
beginning down to the present day. It has, as a concluding 
chapter, a notice of the “ French Writers of Louisiana.” An 
admirable series of books, translated from the French, on the 
great French writers, is now in course of publication in Chi- 
cago. These two last mentions, by the way, strikingly sug- 
gest how wide, territorially, the bounds of the republic of 
letters are becoming in our country. 

The cyclopedias are, some of them, both in articles on 
particular authors and in their sketches of French literary 
history as a whole, good sources of general information on 
the subject. Readers who command the means of comparing 
several different cyclopedias, or several successive editions of 
some one cyclopedia, as, for example, the “Encyclopedia 
Britannica,” will find enlightening and-stimulating the not 
always harmonious views presented on the same topics. Hal- 
lam’s “History of Literature in Europe” is an additional 
authority by no means to be overlooked. And, finally, it is to 
be remembered that any good general history of France will 
almost certainly contain notices of the more important literary 
events co-ordinately with those of political, social, economic, 
or scientific moment. 


b2 Classic Fiench Course in English. 





ai; 
FROISSART. 


1337-1410. 


Frencn literature, for the purposes of the present volume, - 
may be said to commence with Froissart. Froissart is a kind 
of medieval Herodotus. His time is, indeed, almost this side 
the Middle Ages; but by character and by sympathy he be- 
longs rather to the medieval than to the modern world. He 
is delightfully like Herodotus in the style and the spirit of 
his narrative. Like Herodotus, he became a traveler in order 
to become an historian. Like Herodotus, he was cosmopolite 
enough not to be narrowly patriotic. Frenchman though he 
was, he took as much pleasure in recounting English vic- 
tories as he did in recounting French. His countrymen 
have even accused him of unpatriotic partiality for the 
English. His Chronicles have been, perhaps, more popu- 
lar in their English form than in their original French. 
Two prominent English translations have been made, of 
which the later, that by Thomas Johnes, is now most read. 
Sir Walter Scott thought the earlier excelled in charm of 
style. 

Jehan or Jean Froissart was a native of Valenciennes. 
His father meant to make a priest of him, but the boy had 
tastes of his own. Before he was well out of his teens he 
began writing history. This was under the patronage of a 
great noble. Froissart was all his life a natural courtier. 
He throve on the patronage of the great. It was probably 
not a fawning spirit in him that made him this kind of man; 
it was rather an innate love of splendor and high exploit. 
He admired chivalry, then in its last days, and he painted it 
with the passion of an idealizer, His father had been an 
heraldic painter, so it was peyhaps an hereditary strain in the 


Froissart. 93 





son that naturally attached him to rank and royalty. The 
people—that is, the promiscous mass of mankind—hardly 
exist to Froissart. His pages, spacious as they are, have 
scarcely room for more than kings and nobles, and knights 
and squires. He is a picturesque and romantic historian, in 
whose chronicles the glories of the world of chivalry—a 
world, as we have said, already dying, and so soon to disap- 
pear—are fixed forever on an ample canvas, in moving form 
and shifting color, to delight the backward-looking imagina- 
tion of mankind. 

Froissart, besides being chronicler, was something of a 
poet. It would still be possible to confront one who should 
eall this in question with thirty thousand surviving verses 
from the chronicler’s pen. Quantity, indeed, rather than 
quality, is the strong point of Froissart as poet. 

He had no sooner finished the first part of his Chronicles, 
a compilation from the work of an earlier hand, than he 
posted to England for the purpose of formally presenting 
his work to the queen, a princess of Hainault. She rewarded 
him handsomely. Woman enough, too, she was, woman 
under the queen, duly to despatch him back again to his 
native land, where the young fellow’s heart, she saw, was 
lost to a noble lady, whom, from his inferior station, he could 
woo only as moth might woo the moon. He subsequently 
returned to Great Britain, and rode about on horseback gath- 
ering materials of history. He visited Italy under excellent 
auspices, and, together with Chaucer and with Petrarch, 
witnessed a magnificent marriage ceremonial in Milan. Frois- 
sart continued to travel far and wide, always a favorite with 
princes, but always intent on achieving his projected work. 
He finally died at Chimay, where he had spent his closing 
years in rounding out to their completeness his “ Chronicles 
of England, France, and the Adjoining Countries.” 

Froissart is the most leisurely of historians, or, rather, he 
is a writer who presupposes the largest allowance of leisure 
at the command _of his readers. He does not seek proportion 
and perspective. He simply tells us all he has been able to 


24 Classie French Course in English. 





find out respecting each transaction in its turn as it suc- 
cessively comes up in the progress of his narrative. If he 
goes wrong to-day, he will perhaps correct himself to-mor- 
row, or day after to-morrow—this not by changing the first 
record where it stands, to make it right, but by inserting a 
note of his mistake at the point, whatever it may be, which 
he shall chance to have reached in the work of composition 
when the new and better light breaks in on his eyes. The 
student is thus never quite certain but that what he is at 
one moment reading in his author may be an error of which 
at some subsequent moment he will be faithfully advised. A 
little diseomposing, this, but such is Froissart; and it is the 
philosophical way to take your author as he is, and make the 
best of him. 

Of such an historian, an historian so diffuse, and so little 
selective, it would obviously be difficult to give any suitably 
brief specimen that should seem to present a considerable | 
historic action infull. We go to Froissart’s account of the 
celebrated battle of Poitiers (France). This was fought in 
1356, between Edward the Black Prince on the English side, 
and King John on the side of the French. King John, as a 
result of the battle, fell into the hands of the enemy. 

The king of the French was, of course, a great prize to 
be secured by the victorious English. There was eager indi- 
vidual rivalry as to what particular warrior should be ad- 
judged his true captor. Froissart thus describes the strife 
and the issue: 


There was much pressing at this time, through eagerness to take the 
king; and those who were nearest to him, and knew him, cried out, 
“Surrender yourself, surrender yourself, or you are a dead man!” In 
that part of the field was a young knight from St. Omer, who was engaged 
by a salary in the service of the king of England; his name was Denys 
de Morbeque, who for five years had attached himself to the English, on 
account of having been banished in his younger days from France, for a 
murder committed in an affray at St. Omer. It fortunately happened for 
this knight, that he was at the time near to the king of France, when he 
was somuch pulled about. He, by dint of force, for he was very strong and 
robust, pushed through the crowd, and said to the king, in good French, 


Froissart. 25 





“Sire, sire, surrender yourself!” The king, who found himself very 
disagreeably situated, turning to him, asked, “‘ To whom shall I surrender 
myself? to whom? Where is my cousin, the Prince of’ Wales? If I 
could see him, I would speak to him.” “Sire,” replied Sir Denys, ‘he 
is not here; but surrender yourself to me, and I will lead you to him.” 
“Who are you?” said the king. “Sire, I am Denys de Morbeque, a 
knight from Artois; but I serve the king of England because I cannot 
belong to France, having forfeited all I possessed there.” The king then 
gave him his right-hand glove, and said, “I surrender myself to you.” 
There was much crowding and pushing about; for every one was eager to 
cry out, “I have taken him!” Neither the king nor his youngest son 
Philip were able to get forward, and free themselves from the throng. . 

The Prince [of Wales] asked them [his marshals] if they knew any 
thing of the king of France; they replied, ‘ No, sir, not for a certainty ; 
but we believe he must be either killed or made prisoner, since he has 
never quitted his batallion,.” The prince then, addressing the Earl of 
Warwick and Lord Cobham, said: ‘I beg of you to mount your horses, 
and ride over tle field so that on your return you may bring me some 
certain intelligence of him.” The two barons, immediately mounting 
_ their horses, left the prince, and made for a small hillock, that they might 
look about them. From their stand they perceived a crowd of men-at- 
arms on foot, who were advancing very slowly. The king of France was 
in the midst of them, and in great danger; for the English and Gascons 
had taken him from Sir Denys de Morbeque, and were disputing who 
should have him, the stoutest bawling out, “It is I that have got him.” 
“No, no,” replied the others, “we have him.” The king, to escape 
from this peril, said : “Gentlemen, gentlemen, I pray you conduct me and 
my son in a courteous manner to my cousiu the prince; and do not make 
such a riot about my capture, for I am so great a lord that I can make all 
sufficiently rich.’? These words, and others which fell from the king, 
appeased them a little; but the disputes were always beginning again, 

and they did not move a step without rioting. When the two barons 
' gaw this troop of people, they descended from the hillock, and, sticking 
spurs into their horses, made up to them. On their arrival, they asked 
what was the matter. They were answered, that it was the. king of 
France, who had been made prisoner, and that upward of ten knights and 
squires challenged him at the same time, as belonging to each of them. 
The two barons then pushed through the crowd by main force, and or- 
dered all to draw aside. They commanded, in the name of the prince, 
and under pain of instant death, that every one should keep his distance, 
and not approach unless ordered or desired so to do. They all retreated 
behind the king; and the two barons, dismounting, advanced to the king 
with profound reverences, and conducted him i in a Eepcmahio manner to 
the Prince of Wales. 

2 


26 Classic French Course in English. 





We continue our citation from Froissart with the brief 
chapter in which the admiring chronicler tells the gallant 
story of the Black Prince’s behavior as host toward his royal 
captive, King John of France (it was the evening after the 
battle): 


When evening was come, the Prince of Wales gave a supper in his 
pavilion to the king of France, and to the greater part of the princes and: 
barons who were prisoners. The prince seated the king of France, and 
his son the Lord Philip, at an elevated and well-covered table ; with them 
were Sir James de Bourbon, the Lord John d’ Artois, the Earls of Tancar- 
ville, of Estampes, of Dammartin, of Graville, and the Lord of Partenay. 
The other knights and squires were placed at different tables. The prince 
himself served the king’s table, as well as the others, with every mark 
of humility, and would not sit down at it, in spite of all his entreaties for 
him so to do, saying that ‘the was not worthy of such an honor, nor did 
it appertain to him to seat himself at the table of so great a king, or of so 
valiant a man as he had shown himself by his actions that day.” He 
added, also, with a noble air, ‘‘ Dear sir, do not make a poor meal because 
the Almighty God has not gratified your wishes in the event of this day ; 

- for be assured that my lord and father will show you every honor and 
friendship in his power, and will arrange your ransom so reasonably, that 
you will henceforward always remain friends. Iu my opinion, you have 
cause to be glad that the success of this battle did not turn out as you 
desired ; for you have this day acquired such high renown for prowess 
that you have surpassed all the best knights on your side. I do not, dear 
sir, say this to flatter you: for all those of our side who have seen and 
observed the actions of each party, have unanimously allowed this to be 
your due, and decree you the prize and garland for it.” At the end of 
this speech, there were murmurs of praise heard from every one; and the 
French said the prince had spoken nobly and truly, and that he would be 
one of the most gallant princes in Christendom if God should grant him 
life to pursue his career of glory. , 


A splendid and a gracious figure the Black Prince makes 
in the pages of Froissart. It was great good fortune for 
the posthumous fame of chivalry that the institution should 
have come by an artist so gifted and so loyal as this French- 
man, to deliver its features in portrait to after-times, before 
the living original vanished forever from the view of history. 
How much the fiction of Sir Walter Scott owes to Froissart, 
and to Philip de Comines after Froissart, those only can un- 


- Froissart. — 27 





derstand who have read both the old chronicles and the 
modern romances. 

It was one of the congenial labors of Sidney Lanier—pure 
flame of genius that late burned itself out so swiftly among us! 
—to edit a reduction or abridgment of Froissart’s Chronicles 
dedicated especially to the use of the young. “The Boy’s 
Froissart,” he called it. This book is enriched with a wise 
and genial appreciation of Froissart’s quality by his American 
editor. 

Whoever reads Froissart needs to remember that the old 
chronicler is too much enamored of chivalry, and is too easily 
dazzled by splendor of rank, to be a rigidly just censor of 
faults committed by knights and nobles and kings. Froissart; 
in truth, seems to have been nearly destitute of the sentiment 
of humanity. War to him was chiefly a game and a spectacle. 

Our presentation of Froissart must close with a single 
passage additional, a picturesque one, in which the chronicler 
describes the style of living witnessed by him at the court— 
we may so not unfitly apply a royal word—of the Count de 
Foix. The reader must understand, while he reads what we 
here show, that Froissart himself, in close connection, relates 
at full, in the language of an informant of his, how this mag- 
nificent Count de Foix had previously killed, with a knife at 
his throat, his own and his only son. “I was truly sorry,” so, 
at the conclusion of the story, Froissart, with characteristic 
direction of his sympathy, says, ‘for the count his father, 
‘whom I found a magnificent, generous, and courteous lord, 
and also for the country that was discontented for want of 
an heir.” Here is the promised passage; it occurs in shave ninth 
chapter of the third volume: 


Count Gaston Phoebus de Foix, of whom I am now speaking, was at 
that time fifty-nine years old; and I must say, that although I have seen 
very many knights, kings, princes, and others, I have never seen any so 
handsome, either in the form of his limbs and sliape, or in countenance, 

~ which was fair and ruddy, with gray and amorous eyes, that gave delight 
’ whenever he chose to express affection. He was so perfectly formed, 
one could not praise him too much. He loved earnestly the things he 


28 Classic French Course in English. 





ought to love, and hated those which it was becoming him so to hate, He 
was a prudent knight, full of enterprise and wisdom. He had never any 
men of abandoned character with him, reigned prudently, and was con- 
stant in his devotions. There were regular nocturnals from the Psalter, 
prayers from the rituals to the Virgin, to the Holy Ghost, and from the 
burial service. He had every day distributed as alms, at his gate, five florins 
in small coin, to all comers. He was liberal and courteous in his gifts, and 
well knew how to take when it was proper, and to give back where he 
had confidence. He mightily loved dogs above all other animals, and 
during the summer and winter amused himself much with hunting... . 

When he quitted his chamber at midnight for supper, twelve servants 
bore each a lighted torch before him, which were placed near his table, 
and gave a brilliant light to the apartment. The hall was full of knights 
and squires, and there were plenty of tables laid out for any person who 
chose to sup. No one spoke to him at his table, unless he first began a 
conversation. He commonly ate heartily of poultry, but only the wings 
and thighs; for in the day-time, he neither ate nor drank much. He had 
great pleasure in hearing minstrels; as he himself was a proficient in the 
science, and made his secretaries sing songs, ballads, and roundelays. He 
remained at table about two hours, and was pleased when fanciful dishes 
were served up to him, which having seen, he immediately sent them to 
the tables of his knights and squires. 

In short, every thing considered, though I had before been in several 
courts of kings, dukes, princes, counts, and noble ladies, | was never at 
one that pleased me more, nor was I ever more delighted with teats of 
arms, than at this of the Count de Foix. There were knights and squires 
to be seen in every chamber, hall, and court, going backward, and for- 
ward, and conversing on arms and amours. Every thing honorable 
was there to be found. All intelligence from distant countries was there 
to be learnt, for the gallantry of the count had brought visitors from all 
parts of the world. It was there I was informed of the greater part of 
those events which had happened in Spain, Portugal, Arragon, Navarre, 
England, Scotland, and on the borders of Languedoc; for I saw, during 
my residence, knights and squires arrive from every nation. I there- 
fore made inquiries from them, or from the count himself, who cheerfully 
conversed with me. 


The foregoing is one of the most celebrated passages of 
description in Froissart. At the same time that it discloses 
the form and spirit of those vanished days, which will never 
come again to the world, it discloses likewise the character of 
the man, who must indeed have loved it all well, to have been 
able so well to describe it. 


Froissart. 29 





We take now a somewhat long forward step, in going, as 
we do, at once from Froissart to Rabelais. Comines, an his- 
torian intervening, we must reluctantly pass, with thus barely 
mentioning his name. 


EFY. 
RABELAIS. 


1495-1553. 


RaBE.alIs is one of the most famous of writers. But he is, 
at the same time, of famous writers perhaps quite incompa- 
rably the coarsest. 

The real quality of such a writer it is evidently out of the 

question to exhibit at all adequately here. But equally out 
of the question it is to omit Rabelais altogether from an ac- 
count of French literature. 
_ Of the life of Frangois Rabelais, the man, these few facts 
will be sufficient to know. In early youth he joined the 
monastic order of Franciscans. That order hated letters; 
but Rabelais loved them. He, in fact, conceived a voracious 
ambition of knowledge. He became immensely learned. This 
fact, with what it implies of long labor patiently achieved, 
is enough to show that Rabelais was not without seriousness 
of character. But he was much more a merry-andrew than 
a pattern monk. He made interest enough with influential 
friends to get himself transferred from the Franciscans to the 
Benedictines, an order more favorable to studious pursuits. 
But neither among the Benedictines was this roistering spirit 
at ease. He left them irregularly, but managed to escape 
punishment for his irregularity. At last, after various vicis- 
situdes of occupation, he settled down as curate of Meudon, 
where (the place, however, is doubtful, as also the date) in 
1553 he died. He was past fifty years of age before he fin- 
ished the work which has made him famous. 

This work is “The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel,” a 


-80 Classic French Course in English. 





grotesque and nondescript production, founded, probably, on 
some prior romance or traditionary tale of giants. The nar- 
rative of Rabelais is a tissue of adventures shocking every 
idea of verisimilitude, and serving only as a vehicle for the 
strange humor of the writer. The work is replete with evi- 
dences of Rabelais’s learning. It would be useless to attempt 
giving any abstract or analysis of a book which is simply a 
wild chaos of material jumbled together with little regard to 
logic, order, or method of whatever sort. We shall better 
represent its character by giving a few specimen extracts. 

Rabelais begins his romance characteristically. According 
as you understand him here, you judge the spirit of the whole 
work, Either he now gives you a clew by which, amid the 
mazes of apparent sheer frivolity on his part, you may fol- 
low till you win your way to some veiled serious meaning 
that he had all the time, but never dared frankly avow; 
or else he is playfully misleading you on a false scent, which, 
however long held to, will bring you out nowhere—in short, 
is quizzing you. Let the reader judge for himself. Here is 
the opening passage—the “ Author’s Prologue,” it is called 
in the English translation executed by Sir Thomas Urquhart 
‘and Motteaux ; a version, by the way, which, with whatever 
‘faults of too ‘ina freedom, is the work of minds and con- 
sciences singularly sympathetic with the genius of the origi- 

nal ; the English student is perhaps hardly at all at disadvan- 
tage, in comparison with the French, for the full appreciation 
of Rabelais : 


Most noble and illustrious drinkers, and you thrice precious pockified 
blades (for to you, and none else, do I dedicate my writings), Alcibiades, in 
that dialogue of Plato’s which is entitled ‘‘The Banquet,” whilst he was 
setting forth the praises of his schoolmaster Socrates (without all question 
the prince of philosophers), amongst other discourses to that purpose said 
that he resembled the Sileni. Sileniof old were little boxes, like those we 
now may see in the shops of apothecaries, painted on the outside with wan- 
ton toyish figures, as harpies, satyrs, bridled geese, horned hares, saddled 
ducks, flying goats, thiller harts, and other such counterfeited pictures, at 
pleasure, to excite people unto laughter, as Silenus himself, who was the 
foster-father of good Bacchus, was wont to do; but within those capricious 


Rabelais. 31 





caskets called Sileni, were carefully preserved and kept many rich and fine 
drugs, such as balm, ambergreese, amomon, musk, civet, with several kinds 
of precious stones, and other things of great price. Just such another thing 
was Socrates ; for to have eyed his outside, and esteemed of him by his ex- 
terior appearance, you would not have given the peel of an onion for him, 
so deformed he was in body, and ridiculous in his gesture. . . . Opening 
this box you would have found within it a heavenly and inestimable drug, 
@ more than human understanding, an admirable virtue, matchless learning, 
invincible courage, inimitable sobriety, certain contentment of mind, per- 
fect assurance, and an incredible disregard of all that for which men com- 
monly do so much watch, run, sail, fight, travel, toil and turmoil them- 
selves. 

Whereunto (in your op‘nion) doth this little flourish of a preamble 
tend? For so much as you, my good disciples, and some other jolly 
fools of ease and leisure, . . . are too ready to judge, that there is noth- 
ing in them [Rabelais’s writings] but jests, mockeries, lascivious discourse, 
and recreative lies; . . . therefore is it, that you must open the book, and 
seriously consider of the matter treated in it. Then shall you find that it 
containeth things of far higher value than the box did promise; that is to 
say, tliat the subject thereof is not so foolish, as by the title at the first 
sight it would appear to be. 

. . - Did you ever see a dog with a marrow-bone in his mouth? ... 
Like him, you must, by a sedulous lecture [reading], and frequent medi- 
tation, break the bone, and suck out the marrow; that is, my allegorical 
sense, or the things I to myself propose to be signified by these Pytha- 
gorical symbols; .. . the most glorious doctrines and dreadful mysteries, 
as well in what concerneth our religion, as matters of the public state 
and life economical. 


Up to this point the candid reader has probably been con- 
scious of a growing persuasion that this author must be at 
bottom a serious-if also a humorous man—a man, therefore, 
excusably intent not to be misunderstood as a mere buffoon. 
But now let the candid reader proceed with the following, 
and confess, upon his honor, if he is not scandalized and per- 
plexed. What shall be said of a writer who thus plays with 
his reader ? 


Do you believe, upon your conscience, that Homer, whilst he was 
couching his Iliad and Odyssey, had any thought upon those allegories 
which Plutarch, Heraclides Ponticus, Eustathius, Phornutus, squeezed 
out of him, and which Politian filched again from them? If you trustit, 
with neither hand nor foot do you come near to my opinion, which judg- 


82 Classie French Course in English. 





eth them to have been as little dreamed of by Homer, as the gospel sacra- 
ments were by Ovid, in his Metamorphoses; though a certain gulligut 
friar, and true bacon-picker, would have undertaken to prove it if, per- 
haps, he had met with as very fools as himself, and, as the proverb says, 
‘a lid worthy of such a kettle.” 

If you give any credit thereto, why do not you the same to these jovial 
new Chronicles of mine? Albeit, when I did dictate them, I thought 
thereof no more than you, who possibly were drinking the whilst, as I was. 
For, in the composing of this lordly book, I never lost nor bestowed any 
more, nor any other time, than what was appointed to serve me for taking 
of my bodily refection; that is, whilst I was eating and drinking. And, 
indeed, that is the fittest and most proper hour, wherein to write these 
high matters and deep sentences; as Homer knew very well, the para- 
gon of all philologues, and Ennius, the father of the Latin poets, as Hor- 
ace calls him, although a certain sneaking jobbernol alleged that his 
verses smelled more of the wine than oil. 


Does this writer quiz his reader, or, in good faith, give 
him a needed hint? Who shall decide ? 

We have let our first extract thus run on to some length, 
both for the reason that the passage is as representative as 
any we could properly offer of the quality of Rabelais, and 
also for the reason that the key of interpretation is here 
placed in the hand of the reader, for unlocking the enigma of 
this remarkable book. The extraordinary horse-play of pleas- 
antry, which makes Rabelais unreadable for the general pub- 
lic of to-day, begins so promptly, affecting the very prologue, 
that we could not present even that piece of writing entire in 
our extract. We are informed that the circulation in En- 
gland of the works of Rabelais, in translation, has been inter- 
fered with by the English government, on the ground of 
their indecency. We are bound to admit that, if any writ- 
ings whatever were to be suppressed on that ground, the writ- 
ings of Rabelais are certainly entitled to be of the number. 
It is safe to say that never, no, not even in the boundless li- 
cense of the comedy of Aristophanes, was more flagrant inde- 
cency, and indecency proportionately more redundant in vol- 
ume, perpetrated in literature, than was done by Rabelais. 
Indecency, however, it is, rather than strict lasciviousness. 
Rabelais sinned against manners more than he sinned against 


Rabelais. 33 





morals. But his obscenity is an ocean, without bottom or 
shore. Literally, he sticks at nothing that is coarse. Nay, 
this is absurdly short of expressing the fact. The genius of 
Rabelais teems with invention of coarseness, beyond what 
any one could conceive as possible, who had not taken his 
measure of possibility from Rabelais himself. And his dic- 
tion was as opulent as his invention. 

Such is the character of Rabelais the author. What, then, 
was it, if not fondness for paradox, that could prompt Cole- 
ridge to say, “I could write a treatise in praise of the moral 
elevation of Rabelais’s works, which would make the church 
stare and the conventicle groan, and yet would be truth, and 
nothing but the truth?” If any thing besides fondness for 
paradox inspired Coleridge in saying this, it must, one would 
guess, have been belief on his part in an allegorical sense 
hidden deep underneath the monstrous mass of the Rabelais- 
ian buffoonery. A more judicious sentence is that of Hallam, 
the historian of the literature of Europe : “He [Rabelais] is 
never serious in a single page, and seems to have had little 
other aim, in his first two volumes, than to pour out the ex- 
uberance of his animal gayety.” 

The supply of animal gayety in this man was something 
portentous. One cannot, however, but feel that he forces it 
sometimes, as sometimes did Dickens those exhaustless ani- 
mal spirits of his. A very common trick of the Rabelaisian 
humor is to multiply specifications, or alternative expressions, 
one after another, almost without end. From the second 
book of his romance—an afterthought, probably, of continua- 
tion to his unexpectedly successful first book—we take the 
last paragraph of the prologue, which shows this. The ve- 
racious historian makes obtestation of the strict truth of his 
narrative, and imprecates all sorts of evil upon such as do 
not believe it absolutely. We cleanse our extract a little : 


And, therefore, to make an end of this Prologue, even as I give myself 
to an hundred thousand panniers-full of fair devils, body and soul, . . . 
in case that I lie so much as one single word in this whole history; after 
the ee manner, St. Anthony’s fire burn you, Mahoom’s disease whirl 

2 


84 Classic French Course in English. 





you, the squinance with a stitch in your side, and the wolf in your 
stomach truss you, the bloody flux seize upon you, the cursed sharp in- 
flammations of wild fire, as slender and thin as cow’s hair strengthened 
with quicksilver, enter into you, . . . and, like those of Sodom and Go- 
morrha, may you fall into sulphur, fire, and bottomless pits, in case yon do 
not firmly believe all that I shall relate unto you in this present Chronicle. 


So much for Rabelais’s prologues. Our readers must now 
see something of what, under pains and penalties denounced 
so dire, they are bound to believe. We condense and defe- 
cate for this purpose the thirty-eighth chapter of the first 
book, which is staggeringly entitled, “How Gargantua did. 
eat up Six Pilgrims in a Sallad : ” 


The story requireth that we relate that which happened unto six pil- 
grims, who came from Sebastian near to Nantes; and who, for shelter 
that night, being afraid of the enemy, had hid themselves in the garden 
upon the chickling peas, among the cabbages and lettuces. Gargantua, 
finding himself somewhat dry, asked whether they could get any lettuce 
to make him a sallad; and, hearing that there were the greatest and fairest 
in the country—for they were as great as plum trees, or as walnut 
trees—he would go thither himself, and brought thence in his hand what 
he thought good, and withal carried away the six pilgrims, who were in 
so great fear that they did not dare to speak nor cough. Washing them, 
therefore, first at the fountain, the pilgrims said one to another, softly, 
“What shall we do? Weare «almost drowned here amongst these let- 
tuce: shall we speak? But, if we speak, he will kill us for spies.” And, 
as they were thus deliberating what to do, Gargantua put them, with the 
lettuce, into a platter of the house, as large as the huge tun of the White 
Friars of the Cistercian order; which done, with oil, vinegar, and salt, he 
ate them up to refresh himself a little before supper, and had already 

_ swallowed up five of the pilgrims, the sixth being in the platter, totally 
_ hid under a lettuce, except his bourdon, or staff, that appeared, and noth- 
ing else. Which Grangousier [Gargantua’s father] seeing, ‘said to Gar- 
gantua, “T think that is the horn of a shell snail: do not eat it.’ “Why 
not?” said Gargantua; “they are good all this month:” which he no 
sooner said, but, drawing up the staff, and therewith taking up the pil- 
grim, he ate him very well, then drank a terrible draught of excellent white 
wine, The pilgrims, thus devoured, made shift to save themselves, as 
well as they could, by drawing their bodies out of the reach of the grind- 
ers of his teeth, but could not escape from thinking they had been put in 
the lowest dungeon of a prison. And, when Gargantua whiffed the great 
draught, they thought to have drowned in his mouth, and the flood of 


Rabelais. 85 





wine had almost carried them away into the gulf of his stomach, Never- 
theless, skipping with their bourdons, as. St. Michael’s palmers used -to 
do, they sheltered themselves from the danger of that inundation under 
the banks of his teeth. But cne of them, by chance, groping, or sound- 
ing the country with his staff, to try whether they were in safety or no, 
struck hard against the cleft of a hollow tooth, and hit the mandibulary 
sinew or nerve of the jaw, which put Gargantua to very great pain, so 
that he began to ery for the rage that he felt. To ease himself, therefore, 
of his smarting ache, he called for his tooth-picker, and, rubbing towards 
a young walnut-tree, where they lay skulking, unnestled you, my gentle- 
man pilgrims. For he caught one by the legs, another by the scrip, an- 
other by the pocket, another by the scarf, another by the band of the 
breeches; and the poor fellow that had hurt. him with the bourdon, him 
he hooked to by [another part of his clothes]. ... The pilgrims, thus 
dislodged, ran away. 


Rabelais closes his story with jocose irreverent application 
-of Seripture—a manner of his which gives some color to the 
tradition of.a biblical pun made by him on his death-bed. 

The closest English analogue to Rabelais is undoubtedly 
Dean Swift. We probably never should have had “ Gulliver’s 

Travels” from Swift if we had not first had Gargantua and 
Pantagruel from Rabelais. Swift, however, contrasts Rab- 
elais as well as resembles him. Whereas Rabelais is simply 
monstrous in invention, Swift in invention submits him- 
self loyally to law. Give Swift his world of Lilliput and 
Brobdingnag respectively, and all, after that, is quite natural 
and probable. The reduction or the exaggeration is made upon 
a mathematically calculated scale. For such verisimilitude 
Rabelais cares not a straw. [is various inventions are reck- 
: lessly independent. one of another. A characteristic of Swift 
thus is scrupulous conformity to whimsical law. Rabelais is 
remarkable for whimsical disregard of even his own whim- 
; seys. Voltaire put the matter with his usual felicity—Swift 
is Rabelais in his senses. 

One of the most celebrated—justly celebrated—of Rabe- 
lais’s imaginations is that of the Abbey of Théléme ['The- 
ema]. This constitutes a kind of Rabelaisian Utopia. It 
was proper of the released monk -to give his Utopian dream 


36 Classic French Course in English. 





.the form of an abbey, but of an abbey in which the opposite 
-should obtain of all that he had so heartily hated in his own 
‘monastic experience. A humorously impossible place and 
‘state was the Abbey of Théléme—a kind of sportive Brook 
Farm set far away in a world unrealized. How those Thele- 
mites enjoyed life, to be sure! It was like endless plum 
pudding—for every body to eat, and nobody to prepare : 


All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to 
their own free will'and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they 
thought good; they did eat, drink, labor, sleep, when they had a mind to it, 
and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to con- 
strain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other thing; for so had Gargan- 
tua established it. In all their rule, and strictest tie of their order, there 
was but this one clause to be observed, 


DO WHAT THOU WILT. 

. . . By this liberty they entered into a very laudable cmulation, to do 
all of them what they saw did please one. Ifany of the gallants or ladies 
should say, Let us drink, they would all drink. If any one of them said, 
Let us play, they all played. If one said, Let us go a-walking into the 
fields, they went all... . . There was neither he nor she amongst them 
but could read, write, sing, play upon several musical instruments, speak 
five or six several languages, and compose in them all very quaintly, both 
in verse and prose. Never were seen so valiant knights, so noble and 
worthy, so dextrous and skilful both on foot and a horseback, more brisk 
and lively, more nimble and quick, or better handling all manner of weap- 
ons than were there. Never were seen ladies so proper and handsome, 
so miniard and dainty, less forward, or more ready with their hand and 
with their needle, in every honest and free action belonging to that sex, 
than were there. For this reason, when the time came, that any man of 
the said abbey, either at the request of his parents, or for some other 
cause, had a mind to go out of it, he carried along with him one of the 
ladies, namely her who had before that accepted him as her lover, and 
they were married together. 


The foregoing is one of the most purely sweet imaginative 
passages in Rabelais’s works. The representation, as a whole, 
_sheathes, of course, a keen satire on the religious houses. 
Real religion Rabelais nowhere attacks. 
The same colossal Gargantua who had that eating advent- 
ure with the six pilgrims is made, in Rabelais’s second book, 


Rabelais. 37 





to write his youthful son Pantagruel—also a giant, but des- 
tined to be, when mature, a model of all princely virtues—a 
letter on education, in which the most pious paternal exhorta- 
tion occurs. The whole letter reads like some learned Puri- 
tan divine’s composition, Here are a few specimen sen- 
tences :— 

Fail not most carefully to peruse the books of the Greek, Arabian, and 
Latin physicians, not despising the Talmudists and Cabalists; and by fre- 
quent anatomies get thee the perfect knowledge of that other world, 
called the microcosm, which is man. And at some of the hours of the 
day apply thy mind to the study of the Holy Scriptures: first, in Greek, 
the New Testament, with the Epistles of the Apostles: and then the Old 
Testament in Hebrew. In brief, let me see thee an abyss and bottomless 
pit of knowledge. .. . 

. . - It behooveth thee to serve, to love, to fear God, andon him to 
east all thy thoughts and all thy liope, and, by faith formed in charity, to 
cleave unto him, so that thou mayest never be separated from him by thy 
sins. Suspect the abuses of the world. Set not thy heart upon vanity, 
for this life is transitory; but the Word of the Lord endureth forever. 


“Friar John ” is a mighty man of valor, who figures equiv- 
ocally in the story of Gargantua, and Pantagruel. The Ab- 
bey of Théléme is given him in reward of his services. Some 
have identified this fighting monk with Martin Luther. The 
representation is, on the whole, so conducted as to leave the 
_reader’s sympathies at least half enlisted in favor of the fel- 
low, rough and roistering as he is. 

Panurge is the hero of the romance of Pantagruel,—almost 
more than Pantagruel himself. It would be unpardonable to 
dismiss Rabelais without first making our readers know Pan- 
urge by, at least, a few traits of his character and conduct. 
Panurge was a shifty but unscrupulous adventurer, whom 
Pantagruel, pious prince as he was, coming upon him by 
chance, took and kept under his patronage. Panurge was an 
arch-imp of mischief—mischief indulged in the form of ob- 
scene and malicious practical jokes. Rabelais describes his 
accomplishments in a long strain of discourse, from which we 
purge our selection to follow—thereby transforming Pan- 
urge into a comparatively proper and virtuous person : 


38 Classie French Course in English. 





He had threescore and three tricks to come by it [money] at his need 
of which the most honorable and most ordinary was in manner of thieving, 
secret purloining, and filching, for he was a wicked, lewd rogue, a cozener, 
drinker, roisterer, rover, and a very dissolute and debauched fellow, if 
there were any in Paris; otherwise, and in all matters else, the best and 
most virtuous man in the world; and he was still contriving some plot, and 
devising mischief against the sergeants and the watch. 

At one time he assembled three or four especial good hacksters and roar- 
ing boys; made them in the evening drink like Templars, afterward led 
them till they came under St. Genevieve, or about the college of Navarre, 
and, at the hour that the watch was coming up that way—which he knew 
by putting his sword upon the pavement, and his ear by it, and, when 
he heard his sword shake, it was an infallible sign that the watch was 
near at that instant—then he and his companions took a tumbrel or 
garbage-cart, and gave it the brangle, hurling it with all their force 
down the hill, and then ran away upon the other side; for in less than 
two days he knew all the streets, lanes, and turnings in Paris as well as 
his Deus det. 

At another time he laid, in some fair place where the said watch was to 
pass, a train of gunpowder, and, at tlie very instant that they went along, 
set fire to it, and then made himself sport to see what good grace they had 
in running away, thinking that St. Anthony’s fire had caught them by the 
legs. . . . In one of his pockets he had a great many little horns full of 
fleas and lice, which he borrowed from the beggars of St. Innocent, and 
cast them, with small canes or quills to write with, into the necks of the 
daintiest gentlewomen that he could find, yea, even in the church; for 
he never seated himself above in the choir, but always in the body 
of the church amongst the women, both at mass, at vespers, and at 
sermon. 


Coleridge, in his metaphysical way, keen at the moment on 
the scent of illustrations for the philosophy of Kant, said, 
““Pantagruel is the Reason; Panurge the Understanding.” 
‘Rabelais himself, in the fourth book of his romance, written 
in the ‘last years of his life, defines the spirit of the work. 
This fourth book, the English translator says, is “justly 
‘thought his masterpiece.” The same authority adds with 
enthusiasm, “ Being wrote with more spirit, salt, and flame 
than the first part.” Here, then, is Rabelais’s own expression, 
‘sincere or jocular, as you choose to take it, for what consti- 
tutes the essence of a weeeing: We quote from the “ Pro- 
logue :” oe 


Rabelais. 39 





By the means of a little Pantagruelism (which, you know, is a certain 
jollity of mind, pickled in the scorn of fortune), you see me now [“ at near 
seventy years of age,” his translator says], hale and cheery, as sound as a 
bell, and ready to drink, if you will. 


It is impossible to exaggerate the mad, rollicking humor, 
sticking at nothing, either in thought or in expression, with 
which especially this last book of Rabelais’s work is written. 
But we have no more space for quotation. 

Coleridge’s theory of interpretation for Rabelais’s writings is 
hinted in his “Table Talk,” as follows: “ After any particu- 
larly deep thrust . . . Rabelais, as if to break the blow and 
to appear unconscious of what he has done, writes a chapter 
or two of pure buffoonery.” 

The truth seems to us to be, that Rabelais’s supreme tasie, 
like his supreme power, lay in the line of humorous satire. 
‘He hated monkery, and he satirized the system as openly as 
he dared—this, however, not so much in the love of truth 
‘and freedom as in pure fondness for exercising his wit. 
That he was more than willing to make his ribald drollery 
the fool’s mask from behind which he might aim safely his 
shafts of ridicule at what he despised and hated is, indeed, 
-probable. But in this is supplied to him no sufficient excuse 
‘for his obscene and blasphemous pleasantry. Nor yet are the 
manners of the age an excuse sufficient. Erasmus belonged 
to the same age, and he disliked the monks not less. But 
what a contrast, in point of decency, between Rabelais and 
‘Erasmus ! 


40 Classic French Course in English. 





Vv: 
MONTAIGNE. 


1533-1592, 


MonraienE is signally the author of one‘book. His “Es- 
says” are the whole of him. He wrote letters, to be sure, and 
he wrote journals of travel undertaken in quest of heaith 
and pleasure. But these are chiefly void of interest. Mon- 
taigne the Essayist alone is emphatically the Montaigne that 
survives. ‘“ Montaigne the Essayist ”—tliat has become, as it 
were, a personal name in literary history. 

The “ Essays” are one hundred and seven in number, dis- 
tributed in three books. They are very unequal in length: 
and they are on the most various topics—topics often the 
most whimsical in character. We give a few of his titles, 
taking them as found in Cotton’s translation ; 


That men by various ways arrive at the same end; Whether the gov- 
ernor of a place ought himself to go out to parley; Of liars; Of quick or 
slow speech; A proceeding of some ambassadors; Various events from the 
same counsel; Of cannibals; That we laugh and ery from the same thing; 
Of smell; That the mind hinders itself; Of thumbs; Of virtue; Of coaches; 
Of managing the will; Of cripples; Of experience. 


Montaigne’s titles cannot be trusted to indicate the nature 
of the essays to which they belong. The author’s pen will 
not be bound. It runs on at its own pleasure. Things the 
most unexpected are incessantly turning up in Montaigne— 
things, probably, that were as unexpected to the writer when 
he was writing as they will be to the reader when he is read- 
ing.” The writing, on whatever topic, in whatever vein, al- 
ways revolves around the writer for its pivot. Montaigne, 
from no matter what apparent diversion, may constantly be 
depended upon to bring up in due time at himself. The 
tether is long and elastic, but it is tenacious, and it is 


Montaigne, 41 





securely tied to Montaigne. This, as we shall presently let the 
author himself make plain, is no accident of which Montaigne 
was unconscious. It is the express idea on which the “ Es- 
says” were written. Montaigne, in his “Essays,” is a pure 
and perfect egotist, naked and not ashamed. Egotism is 
Montaigne’s note, his differentia, in the world of literature. 
Other literary men have been egotists—since. But Montaigne 
may be called the first, and he is the greatest ; by no means 
the most monstrous, but the greatest. 

Montaigne was a Gascon, and Gasconisms adulterate the 
purity of his French. But his style—a little archaic now, 
and never finished to the nail—had virtues of its own which 
have exercised a wholesome influence on classic French prose. 
It is simple, direct, manly, genuine. It is fresh and racy of 
the writer. It is flexible to every turn, it is sensitive to every 
rise or fall, of the thought. It is a steadfast rebuke to rant 
and fustian. It quietly laughs to scorn the folly of that style 
which writhes in an agony of expression, with neither thought 
nor feeling present to be expressed. Montaigne’s “ Essays ” 
have been a great and a beneficent formative force in the de- 
velopment of prose style in French. 

For substance, Montaigne is rich in practical wisdom, his 
own by original reflection or by discreet purveyal. He had 
read much, he had observed much, he had experienced much. 
The result of all, digested in brooding thought, he put into 
his “ Essays.” These grew as he grew. He got himself 
transferred whole into them. Out of them, in turn, the 
world has been busy ever since dissolving Montaigne. 

Montaigne’s “ Essays” are, as we have said, himself. Such 
is his own way of putting the fact. To one admiring his essays 
to him, he frankly replied, “ You will like me if you like my 
essays, for they are myself.” The originality, the creative 
character and force of the “ Essays” lies in this autobiograph- 
ical quality in them, Their fascination, too, consists in the 
revelation they contain. This was, first, self-revelation on the 
part of the writer; but no less it becomes, in each case, self- 
revelation in the experience of the reader. For, as face 


42 Classic French Course in English. 





answereth to face in the glass, so doth the heart of man to man 
—from race to race and from generation to generation. If 
Montaigne, in his “ Essays,” held the mirror up to himself, he, 
in the same act, held up the mirror to you and tome. The 
image that we, reading, call Montaigne, is really ourselves. 
We never tire of gazing on it. Weare all of us Narcissuses. 
This is why Montaigne is an immortal and a universal writer. 

Here is Montaigne’s preface to his “ Essays”—‘“ The 
Author to the Reader,” it is entitled : 


Reader, thou hast here an honest book; it doth at the outset forewarn 
thee that, in contriving the same, I have proposed to myself no other than 
a domestic and private end: I have had no consideration at all either to 
thy service or to my glory. My powers are not capable of any such de- 
sign. I have dedicated it to the particular commodity of my kinsfolk and 
friends, so that, having lost me (which they must do shortly), they may 
therein recover some traits of my conditions and humours, and by that 
meaus preserve more whole, and more life-like, the knowledge they had of 
me. Had my intention been to seek the world’s favor, I should surely have 
adorned myself with borrowed beauties. I desire therein to be viewed as I 
appear in mine own genuine, simple, and ordinary manner, without study 
and artifice; for itis myself I paint. My defects are therein to be read to 
the life, and my imperfections and my natural form, so far as public rever- 
ence hath permitted me. If I had lived among those nations which (they 
say) yet dwell under the sweet liberty of nature’s primitive laws, I as- 
sure thee I would most willingly have painted myself quite fully, and 
quite naked. Thus, reader, myself am the matter of my book. There's 
no reason thou shouldst employ thy leisure about so frivolous and vain a 
subject. Therefore, farewell. 

From Montaigne, the 12th of June, 1580. 


Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, our author, as the foregoing 
date will have suggested, derived his most familiar name 
from the place at which he was born and at which he lived. 
Readers are not to take too literally Montaigne’s notice of his 
dispensing with ‘borrowed beauties.” He was, in fact, a 
famous borrower. He himself warns his readers to be care- 
ful how they criticise him; they may be flouting unawares 
Seneca, Plutarch, or some other, equally redoubtable, of the 
reverend ancients. Montaigne is perhaps as signal an example 
as any in literature of the man of genius exercising his pre- 


Montaigne. 43 





scriptive right to help himself to his own wherever he may 
happen to find it. But Montaigne has in turn been freely bor- 
rowed from. Bacon borrowed from him, Shakespeare borrowed 
from him, Dryden, Pope, Hume, Burke, Byron—these, with 
many more, in England; and, in France, Pascal, La Rochefou- 
cauld, Voltaire, Rousseau—directly or indirectly, almost every 
writer since his day. No modern writer, perhaps, has gone in 
solution into subsequent literature more widely than Montaigne. 
But no writer remains more solidly and insolubly entire. 

We go at once to chapter twenty-five of the first book of 
the “ Essays,” entitled, in the English translation, “On the 
Education of Children.” ‘The translation we use henceforth 
throughout is the classic one of Charles Cotton, in a text of 
it edited by Mr, William Carew Hazlitt. The “preface,” 
already given, Cotton omitted to translate. We have allowed 
Mr. Hazlitt to supply the deficiency. Montaigne addresses 
his educational views to a countess. Several others of his 
essays are similarly inscribed to women. Mr. Emerson’s ex- 
cuse of Montaigne for his coarseness—that he wrote for a 
generation in‘which women were not expected to be readers 
—is thus seen to be curiously impertinent to the actual case 
that existed. Of a far worse fault in Montaigne than his 
coarseness—we mean his outright immorality—Mr. Emerson 
makes no mention, and for it, therefore, provides no excuse. 
We shall ourselves, in due time, deal more openly with our 
readers on this point. 

It was for a “boy of quality” that Montaigne aimed to 
adapt his suggestions on the subject of education. In this 
happy country of ours all boys are boys of quality; and we 
shall go nowhere amiss in selecting from the present essay: 


For a boy of quality, then, I say, I would also have his friends solicitous 
to find him out a tutor who has rather a well-made than a well-filled head, 
seeking, indeed, both the one and the other, but rather of the two to prefer 
manners and judgment to mere learning, and that this man should exercise 
his charge after a new method. 

’Tis the custom of pedagogues to be eternally thundering in their pupil’s 
ears, as they were pouring into a funnel, whilst the business of the pupil 


44 Classic French Course in English. 





is only to repeat what the others have said; now, I would have a tutor 
to correct this error, and that, at the very first, he should, according to the 
capacity je has to deal with, put it to the test, permitting his pupil him- 
self to taste things, and of himself to discern and choose them, sometimes 
opening the way to him, and sometimes leaving him to open it for him- 
self; that is, I would not have him alone to invent and speak, but that he 
should also hear his pupil speak in turn. . . . Let him make him put what he 
has learned into a hundred several forms, and accommodate it to so many 
several subjects, to see if le yet rightly comprehends it, and has made it 
his own. . . . ’Tis a sign of crudity and indigestion to disgorge what we 
eat in the same condition it was swallowed: the stomach has not performed 
its office, unless it have altered the form and condition of what was com- 
mitted to it to concoct... . 

Let him make him examine and thoroughly sift every thing he reads 
and lodge nothing in his fancy upon simple authority and upon trust, 
Aristotle’s principles will then be no more principles to him than those of 
Epicurus and the stoics: let this diversity of opinions be propounded to, 
and laid before, him; he will himself choose, if he be able; if not, he 
will remain in doubt. 


“Che, non men che saper, dubbiar m’agerata.” 
DANTE, Inferno, x1, 93. 
[“ That doubting pleases me, not less than knowing.” 
LONGFELLOW’s Z'ranslation, ] 


For, if he embrace the opinions of Xenophon and Plato, by his own reason 
they will no more be theirs, but become his own. Who follows another 
follows nothing, finds nothing, nay, is inquisitive after nothing. “Non 
sumus sub rege; sibi quisque se vindicet.” [‘‘ We are under no king; let 
each look to himself.’—-Szngca, Ep. 33.] Let him, at least, know that he 
knows. It will be necessary that he imbibe their knowledge, not that he 
be corrupted with their precepts; and no matter if he forget where he had 
his learning, provided he know how to apply it to hisown use. Truth and 
reason are common to every one, and are no more his who spake them ~ 
first, than his who speaks them after; ’tis no more according to Plato, than 
according to me, since both he and I equally see and understand them. 
Bees cull their several sweets from this flower and that blossom, here and 
there where they find them; but themselves afterward make the honey, 
which is all and purely their own, and no more thyme and marjoram: so the 
several fragments he borrows from others he will transform and shufile to- 
gether, to compile a work that shall be absolutely his own; that is to say, 
his judgment: his instruction, labor, and study tend to nothing else but 
to form that. . - . Conversation with men is of very great use, and travel 
into foreign countries, . . . to be able chiefly to give an account of the 
humors, manners, customs, and laws of those nations where he has been, 


Montaigne. 45 





and that we may whet and sharpen our wits by rubbing them against 
those of others. ... 

In this conversing with men, I mean also, and principally, those who 
live only in the records of history: he shall, by reading those books, con- 
verse with the great.and heroic souls of the best ages. 


It is difficult to find a stopping-place in discourse so wise 
and so sweet. We come upon sentences like Plato for height 
and for beauty. An example: “The most manifest sign of 
wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that of 
things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.” 
But the genius of Montaigne does not often soar, though 
even one little flight like that shows that it has wings. Mon- 
taigne’s garnishes of quotation from foreign tongues are often 
a cold-blooded device of afterthought with him. His first 
edition was without them in many places where subsequently 
they appear. Readers familiar with Emerson will be re- 
minded of him im perusing Montaigne. Emerson himself 
said, “‘ It seemed to me [in reading the ‘Essays’ of Montaigne]. 
as if I myself had written the book in some former life, so 
sincerely it spoke to my thoughts and experience.” The rich 
old English of Cotton’s translation had evidently a strong in- 
fluence on Emerson, to mold his own style of expression. 
Emerson’s trick of writing “’tis,” was apparently caught from 
Cotton. The following sentence, from the present essay of 
Montaigne, might very well have served Mr. Emerson for his 
own rule of writing: “ Let it go before, or come after, a good 
sentence, or a thing well said, is always in season; if it neither 
suit well with what went before, nor has much coherence with 
what follows after, it is good in itself.” Montaigne, at any 
rate, wrote his “ Essays” on that easy principle. The logic of 
them is the logic of mere chance association in thought. But, 
with Montaigne—whatever is true of Emerson—the association 
at least is not occult; and it is such as pleases the reader not 
less than it pleased the writer. So this Gascon gentleman of 
the olden time never tires us, and never loses us out of his 
hand. Wego with him cheerfully where he so blithely leads. 

Montaigne tells us how he was himself trained under his 


46 Classic French Course in English. 





father. The elder Montaigne, too; had his ideas on education 
—the subject which his son, in this essay, so instructively 
treats. The essayist leads up to his autobiographical episode 
by an allusion to the value of the classical languages, and to 
the question of method in studying them. He says: 


In my infancy, and before I began to speak, he [my father] committed 
me to the care of a German, . . . totally ignorant of our language, but 
very fluent, and a great critic, in Latin. This man, whom he had fetched 
out of his own country, and whom he entertained with a very great 
salary, for this only end, had me continually with him: to him there were 
also joined two others, of inferior learning, to attend me, and to re- 
lieve him, who all of them spoke to me in no other language but Latin. 
As to the rest of his family, it was an inviolable rule, that neither him- 
self nor my mother, man nor maid, should speak any thing in my com- 
pany but such Latin words as every one had learned only to gabble with 
me. It isnot to be imagined how great an advantage this proved to the 
whole family: my father and my mother by this means learned Latin 
enough to understand it perfectly well, and to speak it to such a degree 
as was sufficient for any necessary use, as also those of the servants did 
who were most frequently with me. In short, we Latined it at such a 
rate that it overflowed to all the neighboring villages, where there yet 
remain, that have established themselves by custom, several Latin ap- 
pellations of artisans and their tools. As for what concerns myself, I 
was above six yéars of age before I understood either French or Peri- 
gordin [‘* Perigordin” is Montaigne’s name for the dialect of his province, 
Perigord (Gascony)], any more than Arabic; and, without art, book, 
grammar, or precept, whipping, or the expense of a tear, I had, by that 
time, learned to speak as pure Latin as my master himself, for I had no 
means of mixing it up with any other. 


Weare now to see how, helped by his wealth, the father was 
able to gratify a pleasant whimsey of his own in the nurture 
of his boy. Highly xsthetic was the matin réveille thatbroke 
the slumbers of this hopeful young heir of Montaigne : 


Some being of opinion that it troubles and disturbs the brains of chil- 
dren suddenly to wake them in the morning, and to snatch them vio- 
lently and over-hastily from sleep, wherein they are much more pro-. 
foundly involved than we, he [the father] caused me to be wakened by 
the sound of some musical instrument, and was never unprovided of a 
musician for that purpose. . . . The good man, being extremely timorous 
of any way failing in a thing he had so wholly set his heart upon, suf- 


Montaigne. 47 





fered himself at last to be overruled by the common opinions: . .. he 
sent me, at six years of age, to the College of Guienne, at that time the 
best and most flourishing in France. 


Tn short, as in the case of Mr. Tulliver, the world was “ too 
many” for Eyquem pére ; and, in the education of his son, 
the stout Gascon, having started out well as dissenter, fell 
into dull conformity at last. 

We ought to give some idea of the odd instances, classic 
and other, with which Montaigne plentifully bestrews his pages. 
He is writing of the “ Force of Imagination.” He says: 

A woman, fancying she had swallowed a pin in a piece of bread, cried 
and lamented as though she had an intolerable pain in her throat, where 
she thought she felt it stick; but an ingenious fellow that was brought to 
ler, seeing no outward tumor noralteration, supposing it to be only a con- 
ceit taken at some crust of bread that had hurt her as it went down, 
caused her to vomit, and, unseen, threw a crooked pin into the basin, 
which the woman no sooner saw, but, believing she had cast it up, she 
presently found herself eased of her pain... . 

Such as are addicted to the pleasures of the field have, I make no ques- 
tion, heard the story of the faleoner, who, having earnestly fixed his eyes 
upon a kite in the air, laid a wager that he would bring her down with 
the sole power of his sight, and did so, as it was said; for the tales I bor- 
row, I charge upon the consciences of those from whom I have them. 


We italicize the last foregoing words, to make readers see 
that Montaigne is not to be read for the truth of his instances. 
He uses what comes to hand. He takes no trouble to verify. 
“The discourses are my own,” he says; but even this, as we 
have hinted, must not be pressed too hard in interpretation. 
Whether a given reflection of Montaigne’s is strictly his own, 
in the sense of not having been first another’s, who gave it to 
him, is not to be determined except upon very wide reading, 
very well remembered, in all the books that Montaigne could 
have got under his eye. That was full fairly his own, he 
thought, which he had made his own by intelligent appropri- 
ation. And this, perhaps, expresses in general the sound law 
of property in ‘the realm of mind. At any rate, Montaigne 
will wear no yoke of fast obligation. He will write as pleases 
him. Above all things else, he likes his freedom. 


48 Classic French Course in English. 





Here is one of those sagacious historical scepticisms, in 
which Montaigne was so fond of poising his mind between 
opposite views. It occurs in his essay entitled, “Of the 
Uncertainty of our Judgments: ” 


Amongst other oversights Pompey is charged withal at the battle of 
Pharsalia, he is condemned for making his army stand still to receive the 
enemy’s charge, “by reason that” (I shall here steal Plutarch’s own 
words, which are better than mine) “he by so doing deprived himself of 
the violent impression the motion of running adds to the first shock of 
arms, and hindered that clashing of the combatants against one another, 
which is wont to give them greater impetuosity and fury, especially when 
they come to rush in with their utmost vigor, their courages increasing 
by the shouts and the career; ’tis to render the soldiers’ ardor, as a man 
may say, more reserved and cold.” This is what he says. But, if Cesar 
had come by the worse, why might it not as well have been urged by 
another, that, on the contrary, the strongest and most steady posture of 
fighting is that wherein a man stands planted firm, without motion; and 
that they who are steady upon the march, closing up. and reserving their 
force within themselves for the push of the business, have a great ad- 
vantage against those who are disordered, and who have already spent 
half their breath in running on precipitately to the charge? Besides that, 
an army is a body made up of so many individual members, it is impossi- 
ble for it to move in this fury with so exact a motion as not to break the 
order of battle, and that the best of them are not engaged before their 
fellows can come on to help them. 


The sententiousness of Montaigne may be illustrated by 
transferring here a page of brief excerpts from the *‘ Essays,” 
collected by Mr. Bayle St. John in his biography of the 
author. The apothegmatic or proverbial quality in Mon- 
taigne had a very important sequel of fruitful influence on ~ 
subsequent French writers, as chapters to follow in this vol- 
ume will abundantly show. In reading the sentences sub- 
joined, you will have the sensation of coming suddenly upon 
a treasure-trove of coined proverbial wisdom : 


Our minds are never at home, but ever beyond home. 


I will take care, if possible, that my death shall say nothing that my 
life has not said. 


Life in itself is neither good nor bad: it is the place of what is good 
or bad. 


Montaigne. 49 





Knowledge should not be stuck on to the mind, but incorporated in it. 


Trresolution seems to me the most common and apparent vice of our 
nature. 


Age wrinkles the mind more than the face. 

Habit is a second nature. 

Hunger cures love. 

It is easier to get money than to keep it. 

Anger has often been the vehicle of courage. 

It is more difficult to command than to obey. 

A liar should have a good memory. 

Ambition is the daughter of presumption. 

To serve a prince, you. must be discreet and a liar. 

We learn to live when life has passed. 

The mind is ill at ease when its companion has the colic. 
Weareall richer than we think, but we are brought up to go a-begging. 


The greatest masterpiece of man is . . . to be born at the right 
time. 


We append a saying of Montaigne’s not found in Mr. St. 
John’s collection: 


There is no so good man, who so squares all his thoughts and actions 
to the laws, that he is not faulty enough to deserve hanging ten times 
in his life. 


Montaigne was too intensely an egotist, in his character as 
man no less than in his character as writer, to have many per- 
sonal relations that exhibit him in aspects engaging to our 
love. But one friendship of his is memorable—is even his- 
toric. The name of La Boétie is forever associated with the 
name of Montaigne. La Boétie is remarkable for being, as 
we suppose, absolutely the first voice raised in France against 
the idea of monarchy. His little treatise Contr’ Un (literally, 
“Against One”), or “ Voluntary Servitude,” is by many es- 
teemed among the most important literary productions of 


modern times. Others, again, Mr. George Saintsbury, for ex- 
3 


50 Classic French Course in English. 





ample, consider it an absurdly overrated book. For our own 
part, we are inclined to give it conspicuous place in the 
history of free thought in France. La Boétie died young ; 
and his Contr’? Un was published posthumously—first by the 
Protestants, after the terrible day of St. Bartholomew. Our 
readers may judge for themselves whether a pamphlet in 
which such passages as the following could occur must not 
have had an historic effect upon the inflammable sentiment of 
the French people. We take Mr. Bayle St. John’s translation, 
bracketing a hint or two of correction suggested by com- 
parison of the original French. The treatise of La Boétie is 
sometimes now printed with Montaigne’s “ Essays,” in French 
editions of our author’s works; La Boétie says: 


You sow your fruits [crops] that he [the king} may ravage them; you 
furnish and fill your houses that he may have something to steal; you 
bring up your daughters that he may slake his luxury; you bring up 
your sons that he may take them to be butchered in his wars, to be 
the ministers of his avarice, the executors of his vengeance; you disfigure 
your forms by labor [your own selves you inure to toil] that he 
may cocker himself in delight, and wallow in nasty and disgusting pleasure. 


Montaigne seems really to have loved this friend of his, 
whom he reckoned the greatest man in France. His account 
of La Boétie’s death, Mr. St. John boldly, and not pre- 
sumptuously, parallels with the “ Phedon” of Plato. Noble 
writing, it certainly is, though its stateliness is a shade too 
self-conscious, perhaps. 

We have thus far presented Montaigne in words of his 
own’such as may fairly be supposed likely to prepossess the 
reader in his favor. We could multiply our extracts in- 
definitely in a like unexceptionable vein of writing. But to 
do so, and to stop with these, would misrepresent Mon- 
taigne. Montaigne is very far from being an innocent writer. 
His moral tone generally is low, and often it is execrable. 
He is coarse, but coarseness is not the worst of him. In- 
deed, he is cleanliness itself compared with Rabelais. But 
Rabelais is morality itself compared with Montaigne. 
Montaigne is corrupt and corrupting. This feature of his 


Montaigne. 51 





writings we are necessarily forbidden to illustrate. In an 
essay written in his old age—which we will not even name, 
its general tenor is so evil—Montaigne holds the following 
language : 


I gently turn aside, and avert my eyes from the stormy and cloudy 
sky I have before me, which, thanks be to God, I regard without fear, 
but not without meditation and study, and amuse myself in the remem- 
brance of my better years: 

** Animus quod perdidit, optat, 
Atque in preterita se totus imagine versat.””—Petronius, c. 128. 

[‘‘The mind desires what it has lost, and in fancy flings itself wholly 
into the past.” ] 


Let childhood look forward, and age backward; is not this the 
signification of Janus’ double face? Let years haul me along if they will, 
but it shall be backward; as long as my eyes can discern the pleasant 
season expired, I shall now and then turn them that way; though it 
escape from my blood and veins, I shall not, however, root the image of 
it out of my memory : « 

“ Hoe est 
Vivere bis, vita posse priore frui.”"— Martial, x. 23, 7. 


[‘’Tis to live twice to be able to enjoy former life again.”] 


Harmlessly, even engagingly, pensive seems the foregoing 
strain of sentiment. Who could suppose it a prelude to de- 
tailed reminiscence on the author’s part of sensual pleasures 
—the basest—enjoyed in the past? The venerable volupt- 
uary keeps himself in countenance for his lascivious vein by 
writing as follows: 


I have enjoined myself to dare to say all that I dare to do; even 
thoughts that are not to be publislied displease me; the worst of my 
actions and qualities do not appear to me so evil, as I find it-evil and 
base not to dare to own them. .. . 

. .. Lam greedy of making myself known, and I care not to how 
many, provided it be truly... . Many things that I would not say to 
a particular individual, I say to the people; and, as to my most secret 
thoughts, send my most intimate friends to my book. . . . For my part, 
if any one should recommend me as a good pilot, as being very modest, 
or very chaste, I should owe him no thanks [because tlie recommenda- 
tion would be false]. 


52 Classic French Course in English. 





We must leave it—as, however, Montaigne himself is far 
enough from leaving it—to the imagination of readers to 
conjecture what “ pleasures” they are, of which this worn- 
out debauchee (nearing death, and thanking God that he 
nears it “without fear”) speaks in the following sentimental 
strain: 


In farewells, we oftener than not heat our affections toward the things 
we take leave of: I take my last leave of the pleasures of this world; 
these are our last embraces. 


Mr. Emerson, in his “ Representative Men,” makes Mon- 
taigne stand for The Skeptic. Skeptic, Montaigne was. He 
questioned, he considered, he doubted. He stood poised in 
equilibrium, in indifference, between contrary opinions. He 
saw reasons on this side, but he saw reasons also on that, 
and he did not clear his mind. “ Qwe sgai-je?” was his 
motto (“ What know I?”), a question as of hopeless ignor- 
ance—nay, as of ignorance also void of desire to know. 
His life was one long interrogation, a balancing of oppos- 
ites, to the end. 

Such, speculatively, was Montaigne. Such, too, specula- 
tively, was Pascal. The difference, however, was greater 
than the likeness, between these two minds. Pascal, doubt- 
ing, gave the world of spiritual things the benefit of his 
doubt. Montaigne, on the other hand, gave the benefit of his 
doubt to the world of sense. He was a sensualist, he was a 
glutton, he was a lecher. He, for his portion, chose the 
good things of this life. His body he used, to get him 
pleasures of the body. In pleasures of the body he sunk and 
drowned his conscience, if he ever had a conscience. But 
his intelligence survived. He became, at last—if he was not 
such from the first—almost pure sense, without soul. 

Yet we have no doubt Montaigne was an agreeable gen- 
tleman. We think we should have got on well with him as 
a neighbor of ours. He was a tolerably decent father, pro- 
vided the child were grown old enough to be company for 
him. His own lawful children, while infants, had to go out 
$ 


Montaigne. 53 





of the house for their nursing; so it not unnaturally hap- 
pened that all but one died in their infancy. Five of such 
is the number that you can count in his own journalistic en- 
tries of family births and deaths, But, in his “ Essays,” 
speaking as ‘‘ moral philosopher,” he says, carelessly, that he 
had lost “two or three” “ without repining.” This, perhaps, 
is affectation. But what affectation ! 

Montaigne was well-to-do; and he ranked as a gentleman, 
if not asa great nobleman. He lived ina castle, bequeathed 
to him, and by him bequeathed—a castle still standing, and 
full of personal association with its most famous owner. 
He occupied a room in the tower, fitted up as a library. 
Over the door of this room may still, we believe, be read 
Montaigne’s motto, “Que seaije?”  Votaries of Montaigne 
perform their pious pilgrimages to this shrine of their idol- 
atry, year after year, century after century. 

For, remember, it is now three centuries since Montaigne 
wrote. He was before Bacon and Shakespeare. He was con- 
temporary with Charles IX., and with Henry of Navarre. But 
date has little to do with such a writer as Montaigne. His 
quality is sempiternal. He overlies the ages, as the long 
hulk of a great steamship overlies the waves of the sea, 
stretching from summit to summit. Not that, in the form 
of his literary work, he was altogether independent of time 
and of circumstance. Not that he was uninfluenced by his 
historic place, in the essential spirit of his work. But, more 
than often happens, Montaigne may fairly be judged out of 
himself alone. His message he might, indeed, have deliv- 
ered differently ; but it would have been substantially the 
same message, had he been differently placed, in the world, 
and in history. We need hardly, therefore, add any thing 
about Montaigne’s outward life. His true life is in his book. 

Montaigne the Essayist is the consummate, the ideal, ex- 
pression, practically incapable of improvement, of the spirit 
and wisdom of the world. This characterization, we think, 
fairly and sufficiently sums up the good and the bad of Mon- 
taigne. We might seem to describe no very mischievous thing. 


54 Classie French Course in English. 





But‘to have the spirit and wisdom of this world expressed, 
to have it expressed as in a last authoritative form, a form 
to commend it, to flatter it, to justify it, to make it seem suf- 
ficient, to erect it into a kind of gospel—that means much. 
It means hardly less than to provide the world with a new 
Bible—a Bible of the world’s own, a Bible that shall ap- 
prove itself as better than the Bible of the Old and New 
Testaments. Montaigne’s “ Essays” constitute, in effect, 
such a book, The man of the world may—and, to say truth, 
does—-in this volume, find all his needed texts. Here is 
viaticum—daily manna—for him, to last the year round, 
and to last year after year; an inexhaustible breviary for 
the church of this world! It is of the gravest historical 
significance that Rabelais and Montaigne, but especially that 
Montaigne, should, to such an extent, for now three full 
centuries, have been furnishing the daily intellectual food of 
Frenchmen. 

Pascal, in an interview with M. de Saci (carefully reported 
by the latter), in which the conversation was on the subject 
of Montaigne and Epictetus contrasted—these two authors 
Pascal acknowledged to be the ones most constantly in his 
hand—said gently of Montaigne, “‘ Montaigne is absolutely 
. pernicious to those who have any inclination toward irreligion, 
or toward vicious indulgences.” We, for our part, are dis- 
posed, speaking more broadly than Pascal, to say that, to a 
somewhat numerous class of naturally dominant minds, Mon- 
taigne’s “‘ Essays” in spite of all that there is good in them 
—nay, greatly because of so much good in them—are, by 
their subtly insidious persuasion to evil, upon the whole quite 
the most powerfully pernicious book known to us in litera- 
ture either ancient or modern. 


La Rochefoucauld. 55 





Vv. 


LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: 1613-1680; La Bruyére: 1646 (?)-1696; 
Vauvenargues: 1'715-1'747. : 


In La RovcuEFroucavuLp we meet another eminent example 
of the author of one book. “Letters,” “Memoirs,” and 
“ Maxims,” indeed name productions in three kinds, produc- 
tions all of them notable, and all still extant, from La Roche- 
foucauld’s pen. But the “Maxims” are so much more 
famous than either the “Letters” or the “ Memoirs” that 
their author may be said to be known only by those. If it 
were not for the “ Maxims,” the “ Letters and “Memoirs” 
would probably now be forgotten. We here may dismiss 
these from our minds and concentrate our attention exclu- 
sively upon the “ Maxims.” Voltaire said, “The ‘Memoirs’ 
of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld are read, but we know his 
‘ Maxims’ by heart.” 

La Rochefoucauld’s “ Maxims” are detached sentences of 
reflection and wisdom on human character and conduct. They 
are about seven hundred in number, but they are all com- 
prised in a very small volume; for they generally are each 
only two or three lines in length, and almost never does a 
single maxim occupy more than the half of a moderate-sized 
page. The “ Maxims,” detached, as we have described them, 
have no very marked logical sequence in the order in which 
they stand. They all, however, have a profound mutual rela- 
tion. An unvarying monotone of sentiment, in fact, runs 
through them. They are so many different expressions, an- 
swering to so many different observations taken at different 
angles, of one and the same persisting estimate of human 
nature. Self-love is the mainspring and motive of every 
thing we do, or say, or feel, or think—that is the total result 
of the “ Maxims” of La Rochefoucauld. 

The writer’s qualifications for treating his theme were un- 


56 Classie French Course in English. 





surpassed. He had himself the right character, moral and 
intellectual; his scheme of conduct in life corresponded; he 
wrote in the right language—French; and he was rightly 
situated in time, in place, and in circumstance. He needed 
but to look closely within him and without him—which he 
was gifted with eyes to do—and then report what he saw, 
in the language to which he was born. This he did, and his 
* Maxims” are the fruit. His method was largely the skeptical 
method of Montaigne. His result, too, was much the same 
result as his master’s. But. the pupil surpassed the master in 
the quality of his work. There is a fineness, an exquisite- 
ness, in the literary form of La Rochefoucauld, which Mon- 
taigne might indeed have disdained to seek, but which he ~ 
could never, even with seeking, have attained. Each maxim 
of La Rochefoucauld is a “ gem of purest ray serene,” wrought 
to the last degree of perfection in form with infinite artistic 
pains. Purity, precision, clearness, density, point, are per- 
fectly reconciled in La Rochefoucauld’s style with ease, grace, 
and brilliancy of expression. The influence of such literary 
finish, well bestowed on thought worthy to receive it, has 
been incalculably potent in raising the standard of French pro- 
duction in prose. It was Voltaire’s testimony, “One of the 
works which has most contributed to form the national taste, 
and give it a spirit of accuracy and precision, was the little col- 
lection of ‘Maxims’ by Frangois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld.” 

There is a high-bred air about La Rochefoucauld the 
writer, which well accords with the rank and character of 
the man La Rochefoucauld. He was of one of the noblest 
families in France. His instincts were all aristocratic. His 
manners and his morals were those of his class. Brave, spir- 
ited, a touch of chivalry in him, honorable and amiable as 
the world reckons of its own, La Rochefoucauld ran a career 
consistent throughout with his own master-principle—self- 
love. He had a wife whose conjugal fidelity her husband 
seems to have thought a sufficient supply in that virtue for 
both himself and her. He behaved himself accordingly. His 
illicit relations with other women were notorious. But they 


La Rochefoucauld. 57 





unhappily did not make La Rochefoucauld in that respect at 
all peculiar among the distinguished men of his time. His 
brilliant female friends collaborated with him in working out 
his ‘“‘ Maxims.” These were the labor of years. They were 
published in successive editions, during the lifetime of the 
author; and some final maxims were added from his manu- 
scripts after his death. 

Using for the purpose a very recent translation, that of 
A, 8. Bolton (which, in one or two places, we venture to 
conform more exactly to the sense of the original), we give 
almost at hazard a few specimens of these celebrated apo- 
thegms. We adopt the numbering given in the best Paris 
edition of the “ Maxims”: 


No. 11. The passions often beget their contraries. Avarice some- 
times produces prodigality, and prodigality avarice: we are often firm 
from weakness, and daring from timidity. 


No. 13. Our self-love bears more impatiently the condemnation. of our 
tastes than of our opinions. ; 


How much just such detraction from all mere natural hu- 
man greatness is contained in the following penetrative 
maxim: 


No. 18. Moderation is a fear of falling into the envy and contempt 
which those deserve who are intoxicated with their good fortune ; it isa 
vain parade of the strength of our mind; and, in short, the moderation 
of men in their highest elevation is a desire to appear greater than their 
fortune. 


What effectively quiet satire in these few words: 


No. 19. We have strength enough to bear the ills of others. 
This man had seen the end of all perfection in the appar- 
ently great of this world. He could not bear that. such 
should flaunt a false plume before their fellows: 


No. 20. The steadfastness of sages is only the art of locking up their 
uneasiness in their hearts. 


Of course, had it lain in the author’s chosen line to do so, 


he might, with as much apparent truth, have pointed out, 
3* 


58 Classic French Course in English. 





that to lock up uneasiness in the heart requires steadfastness 
no less—nay, more—than not to feel uneasiness. 

The inflation of “ philosophy ” vaunting itself is thus softly 
eased of its painful distention: 


No. 22. Philosophy triumphs easily over troubles passed and troubles 
to come, but present troubles triumph over it. 


When Jesus once rebuked the fellow-disciples of James 
and John for blaming those brethren as self-seekers, he acted 
on the same profound principle with that disclosed in the 
following maxim: 


No. 34. If we had no pride, we should not complain of that of others. 


How impossible it is for that Proteus, self-love, to elude 
the presence of mind, the inexorable eye, the fast hand, of 
this incredulous Frenchman: 


No. 39. Interest [self-love] speaks all sorts of languages, and plays all 
sorts of parts, even that of disinterestedness. 
No, 49. We are never so happy, or so unhappy, as we imagine. 
No. 78. The love of justice is, in most men, only the fear of suffering 
injustice. 
What a subtly unsoldering distrust the following maxim 
introduces into the sentiment of mutual friendship : 


No. 83. What men have called friendship is only a partnership, a mutual 
accommodation of interests, and an exchange of good offices: it is, in short, 
only a traffic, in which self-love always proposes to gain something. 


No. 89. Every one complains of his memory and no one complains of 
his judgment. 


How striking, from its artful suppression of strikingness, 
is the first following, and what a wide, easy sweep of well- 
bred satire it contains : 


No. 93. Old men like to give good advice, to console themselves for 
being no longer able to give bad examples. 


No. 119. We are so much accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, 
that, at last, we disguise ourselves to ourselves. 


La Rochefoucauld. 59 





No. 127. The true way to be deceived is to think one’s self sharper 
than others. 


The plain-spoken proverb, “ A man that is his own lawyer 
has a fool for his client,” finds a more polished expression in 
the following : 


No. 132. It is easier to be wise for others, than to beso for one’s self. 


How pitilessly this inquisitor pursues his prey, the human 
soul, into all its useless hiding-places : 


No. 138. We would rather speak ill of ourselves, than not talk of our- 
selves. 


The following maxim, longer and less felicitously phrased 
than is usual with La Rochefoucauld, recalls that bitter defi- 
nition of the bore—“ One who insists on talking about him- 
self all the time that you are wishing to talk about yourself” : 


“No. 139. One of the causes why we find so few people who appear 
reasonable and agreeable in conversation, is that there is scarcely any 
one who does not think more of what he wishes to say, than of replying 
exactly to whatis said to him. The cleverest and tlie most compliant think 
it enough to show an attentive air; while we see in their eyes and in 
their mind a wandering from what is said to them, and a hurry to return 
to what they wish to say, instead of considering that it is a bad way to 
please or to persuade others, to try so hard to please one’s self, and that 
to listen well is one of the greatest accomplishments we can have in con- 
versation. 


If we are indignant at the maxims following, it is probably 
rather because they are partly true than because they are 
wholly false : 


No. 144. We are not fond of praising, and, without interest, we never 
praise any one. Praise is a cunning flattery, hidden and delivate, which, 
in different ways, pleases him who gives and him who receives it. The 
one takes it as a reward for his merit: the other gives it to show his 
equity and his discernment. 


No. 146. We praise generally only to be praised. 


No. 147. Few are wise enough to prefer wholesome blame to treacher- 
ous praise. j 


60 Classic French Course in English. 





No. 149. Disclaiming praise is a wish to be praised a second time. 


No. 152. If we did not flatter ourselves, the flattery of others could not 
hurt us. 


No. 184. We acknowledge our faults in order to atone, by our sincerity, 
for the harm they do us in the minds of others. 


No. 199. The desire to appear able often prevents our becoming so. 


No. 201. Whoever thinks he can do without the world, deceives him- 
self much; but whoever thinks the world cannot do without him, de- 
ceives himself much more. 


With the following, contrast Ruskin’s noble paradox, that 
the soldier’s business, rightly conceived, is self-sacrifice ; his 
ideal purpose being, not to kill, but to be killed : 


No. 214. Valor, in private soldiers, is a perilous calling, which they 
have taken to in order to gain their living. 


Here is, perhaps, the most current of all La Rochefou- 
cauld’s maxims : 


No, 218. Hypocrisy is a homage which vice renders to virtue. 


Of the foregoing maxim it may justly be said, that its truth 
and point depend upon the assumption, implicit, that there is 
such a thing as virtue—an assumption which the whole ten- 
or of the “ Maxims,” in general contradicts. 

How incisive the following : 


No. 226. Too great eagerness to requite an obligation is a kind of in- 
gratitude. 


No. 298. The gratitude of most men is only a secret desire to receive 
greater favors. 


No. 304, We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive 
those whom we bore, 


No. 313. Why should we have memory enough to retain even the 
smallest particulars of what has happeued to us, and yet not have 
enough to remember how often we have told them to the same individual ? 


The first following maxim satirizes both princes and cour- 
tiers. It might be entitled, “ How to insult a prince, and not 
suffer for your temerity ”: 


La Rochefoucauld. 61 





No. 320. To praise princes for virtues they have not, is to insult them 
with impunity. 

No. 347. We find few sensible people, except those who are of our 
way of thinking. 

No. 409. We should often be ashamed of our best actions, if the world 
saw the motives which cause them. 


No, 424. We boast of faults the reverse of those we have: when we 
are weak, we boast of being stubborn. 


Here, at length, is a maxim that does not depress—that 
animates you : 
No. 432. To praise noble actions heartily is in some sort to take part 


in them. 
The following is much less exhilarating : 


No. 454. There are few instances in which we should make a bad bar- 
gain, by giving up the good that is said of us, on condition that nothing 
bad be said. 


This, also: 


No. 458. Our enemies come nearer to the truth, in the opinions they 
form of us, than we do ourselves. 


Here is a celebrated maxim, vainly “suppressed ” by the 
author, after first publication : 


No. 583. In the adversity of our best friends, we always find some- 
thing which does not displease us. 


Before La Rochefoucauld, Montaigne had said, “ Even in 
the midst of compassion we feel within us an unaccountable 
bitter-sweet titillation of ill-natured pleasure in seeing an- 
other suffer ;” and Burke, after both, wrote (in his ‘‘Sub- 
lime and Beautiful”) with a heavier hand, “I am convinced 
that-we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in 
the real misfortunes and pains of others.” 

La Rochefoucauld is not fairly cynical, more than is Mon- 
taigne. But as aman he wins upon you less. His maxims 
are like hard and sharp crystals, precipitated from the world- 
ly wisdom blandly solute and dilute in Montaigne. 


62 Clussie French Course in English. 





The wise of this world reject the dogma of human depray- 
ity, as taught in the Bible. They willingly accept it—nay, 
accept it complacently, hugging themselves for their own 
penetration—as taught in the “ Maxims” of La Rochefou- 
cauld. 

JEAN DE La Bruy:rz is personally almost as little known 
as if he were an ancient of the Greek or Roman world surviv- 
ing, like Juvenal, only in his literary production. Bossuet 
got him employed to teach history to a great duke, who 
became his patron, and settled a life-long annuity upon him. 
He published his one book, the “ Characters,” in 1687, was 
made member of the French Academy in 1693, and died in 
1696. That, in short, is La Bruyére’s biography. 

His book is universally considered one of the most finished 
products of the human mind. It is not a great work—it 
lacks the unity and the majesty of design necessary for that. 
It consists simply of detached thoughts and observations on a 
variety of subjects. It shows the author to have been aman 
of deep and wise reflection, but especially a consummate mas- 
ter of style. The book is one to read in, rather than to read. 
It is full of food to thought. The very beginning exhibits a 
self-consciousness on the writer’s part very different from 
that spontaneous simplicity in which truly great books origi- 
nate. La Bruyére begins : 


Every thing has been said; and one comes too late, after more than seven 
thousand years that there have been men, and men who have thought. 


La Bruyére has something to say, and that to length unus- 
ual for him, of pulpit eloquence. We select a few specimen 
sentences : 


Christian eloquence has become.a spectacle. That gospel sadness, 
which is its soul, is no longer to be observed in it; its place is supplied by 
advantages of facial expression, by inflections of the voice, by regularity 
of gesticulation, by choice of words, and by long categories. The sacred 
word is no longer listened to seriously; it is a kind of amusement, one 
among many ; it is a game in which there is rivalry, and in which there 
are those who lay wagers. 


La Bruyere. 63 





Profane eloquence has been transferred, so to speak, from the bar 
. . . where it is no longer employed, to the pulpit where it ought not to 
be found. 

Matches of eloquence are made at the very foot of the altar, and in the 
presence of the mysteries. He who listens sits in judgment on him who 
preaches, to condemn or to applaud, and is no more converted by the 
discourse which he praises than by that which he pronounces against. 
The orator pleases some, displeases others, and has an understanding with 
all in one thing—that as he does not seek to render them better, so they 
do not think of becoming better. 


The almost cynical acerbity of the preceding is ostensibly 
relieved of an obvious application to certain illustrious contem- 
porary examples among preachers by the following open 
allusion to Bossuet and Bourdaloue : 


The Bishop of Meaux [Bossuet] and Father Bourdaloue make me think 
of Demosthenes and Cicero. Both of them, masters of pulpit eloquence, 
have had the fortune of great models; the one has made bad critics, the 
other bad imitators, 


Here is a happy instance of La Bruyére’s successful pains 
in redeeming a commonplace sentiment by means of a striking 
form of expression ; the writer is disapproving the use of 
oaths in support of one’s testimony: 


An honest man who ‘says Yes, or No, deserves to be believed; his 
character swears for him. 


Highly satiric in his quiet way, La Bruyére knew how to be. 
Witness the following thrust at a contemporary author, not 
named by the satirist, but, no doubt, recognized by the pub- 
lic of the time : 


He maintains that the ancients, however unequal and negligent they 
may be, have fine traits; he points these out; and they are so fine that 
they make his criticism readable. 


How painstakingly, how self-consciously, La Bruyére did 
his literary work is evidenced by the following : 


A good author, and one who writes with care, often has the experience 
of finding that the expression which he was a long time in search of 


64 Classie French Course in English. 





without reaching it, and which at length he has fou d, is that which was 
the most simple, the most natural, and that which, as it would seem, should 
have presented itself at first, and without effort. 


We feel that the quality of La Bruyére is such as to fit 
him for the admiration and enjoyment of but a compara- 
tively small class of readers. He was somewhat over-exquis- 
ite. His art at times became artifice—infinite labor of style 
to make commonplace thought seem valuable by dint of per- 
fect expression. We dismiss La Bruyére with a single addi- 
tional extract—his celebrated parallel between Corneille and 
Racine : 


Corneille subjects us to his characters and to his ideas; Racine accom- 
modates himself to ours. The one paints men as they ought to be; the 
other paints them as they are. There is more in the former of what one 
admires, and of what one ought even to imitate; there is more in the 
latter of what one observes in others, or of what one experiences in one’s 
self. The one inspires, astonishes, masters, instructs ; the other pleases, 
moves, touches, penetrates. Whatever there is most beautiful, most noble, 
most imperial, in the reason is made use of by the former; by the latter 
whatever is most seductive and most delicate in passion: You find in the 
former maxims, rules, and precepts; in the latter, taste and sentiment. You 
are more absorbed in the plays of Corneille ; you are more shaken and more 
softened in those of Racine. Corneille is more moral; Racine, more nat- 

‘ural. The one appears to make Sophocles his model; the other owes 
more to Euripides, 


Less than half a century after La Rochefoucauld and La 
Bruyére had shown the way, VauvENARGUES followed in a 
similar style of authorship, promising almost to rival the fame 
of his two predecessors. This writer, during his brief life (he 
died at thirty-two), produced one not inconsiderable literary 
work more integral and regular in form, entitled, “ Intro- 
duction to the Knowledge of the Human Mind;” but it is 
his disconnected thoughts and observations chiefly that con- 
tinue to preserve his name. 

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues, though nobly 
born, was poor. His health was frail. He did not receive a 
good education in his youth. Indeed, he was still in his youth 


Vauvenargues, 65 





when he went to the wars. His culture always remained nar- 
row. He did not know Greek and Latin, when to know Greek 
and Latin was, as it were, the whole of scholarship. To 
crown his accidental disqualifications for literary work, he 
fell a victim to the small-pox, which left him wrecked in 
body. This occurred almost immediately after he abandoned 
a military career which had been fruitful to him of hardship, 
but not of promotion. In spite of all that was thus against him, 
Vauvenargues, in those years, few and evil, that were his, 
thought finely and justly enough to earn for himself a lasting 
place in the literary history of his nation. He was in the 
eighteenth century of France without being of it. You have 
to separate him in thought from the infidels and the “ philoso- 
phers” of his time. He belongs in spirit to an earlier age. 
His moral and intellectual kindred was with such as Pascal, 
far more than with such as Voltaire. Vauvenargues is, how- 
ever, a writer for the few, instead of forthe many. His fame is 
high but it isnot wide. Historically, he forms a stepping-stone 
of transition to a somewhat similar nineteenth-century name, 
that of Joubert. A very few sentences of his will suffice to 
indicate to our readers the quality of Vauvenargues. Self- 
evidently, the following antithesis drawn by him between 
Corneille and Racine is subtly and ingeniously thought, as 
well as very happily expressed—this, whatever may be con- 
sidered to be its aptness in point of literary appreciation : 


Corneille’s heroes often say great things without inspiring them; Ra- 
cine’s inspire them without saying them. 


Here is a good saying : 
It is a great sign of mediocrity always to be moderate in praising. 
There is worldly wisdom also here: 


He who knows how to turn his prodigalities to good account practices 
a large and noble economy. 


Virgil’s “ They are able, because they seem to themselves 
to be able,” is recalled by this : 


The consciousness of our strength makes our strength greater. 


66 Classie French Course in English, 





So much for Vauvenargues. 

And so much for what—considering that, logically, though 
not quite chronologically, Vauvenargues belongs with them 
—we may call the seventeenth-century group of French 
pensée-writers. A nineteenth-century group of the same 
literary class will form the subject of a chapter in due course 
to follow. 


Vi. 
LA FONTAINE. 


1621-1695, 


La FontTarne enjoys a unique fame. He has absolutely 
“no fellow in the firmament” of literature. He is the only 
fabulist, of any age or any nation, that, on the score simply 
of his fables, is admitted to be poet as well as fabulist. 
There is perhaps no other literary name whatever among the 
French by long proof more secure than is La Fontaine’s, of 
universal and of immortal renown. Such a fame is, of 
course, not the most resplendent in the world; but to have 
been the first, and to remain thus far the only, writer of fa- 
bles enjoying recognition as true poetry—this, surely, is an 
achievement entitling La Fontaine to monumental mention 
in any sketch, however summary, of French literature. 

Jean de La Fontaine was humbly born, at Chateau-Thierry, 
in Champagne. His early education was sadly neglected. 
At twenty years of age he was still phenomenally ignorant. 
About this time, being now better situated, he developed a 
taste for the classics and for poetry. With La Fontaine the 
man, it is the sadly familiar French story of debaachee man- 
ners in life and in literary production. We cannot acquit 
him, but we are to condemn him only in common with the 
most of his age and of his nation, As the world goes, La 
Fontaine was a “ good fellow,” never lacking friends. These 
were held fast in loyalty to the poet, not so much by any 


La Fontaine. 67 





sterling worth of character felt in him as by an exhaustless, 
easy-going good-nature that, despite his social insipidity, made 
La Fontaine the most acceptable of every-day companions. 
It would be easy to repeat many stories illustrative of this 
personal quality in La Fontaine, while to tell a single story 
illustrative of any lofty trait in his character would be per- 
haps impossible. Still, La Fontaine seemed not ungrateful 
for the benefits he received from others ; and gratitude, no 
commonplace virtue, let us accordingly reckon to the credit 
of a man in general so slenderly equipped with positive claims 
to admiring personal regard. The mirror of bonhomie (easy- 
hearted good-fellowship), he always was. Indeed, that sig- 
nificant, almost untranslatable, French word might have 
been coined to fit La Fontaine’s case. On his amiable side 
—a full hemisphere or more of the man —it sums him up com- 
pletely. Twenty years long this mirror of bonhomie was 
domiciliated, like a pet animal, under the hospitable roof of 
the celebrated Madame de la Sabligre. There was truth as 
well as humor implied in what she said one day: “I have 
sent away all my domestics; I have kept only my dog, my 
cat, and La Fontaine.” 

But La Fontaine had that in him which kept the friend- 
ship of serious men. Moliére, a grave, even melancholy 
spirit, however gay in his comedies ; Boileau and Racine, 
decorous both of them, at least in manners, constituted, 
together with La Fontaine, a kind of private “ Academy,” 
existing on a diminutive scale, which was not without its 
important influence on French letters. La Fontaine seems 
to have been a sort of Goldsmith in this club of wits, the 
butt of many pleasantries from his colleagues, called out by 
his habit of absent-mindedness. St. Augustine was one night 
the subject of an elaborate eulogy, which La Fontaine lost 
the benefit of, through a reverie of his own indulged mean- 
time on a quite different character. Catching, however, at 
the name, La Fontaine, as he came to himself for a moment, 
betrayed the secret of his absent thought by asking, “ Do 
you think St. Augustine had as much wit as Rabelais?” 


68 Classie French Course in English. 





“Take care, Monsieur La Fontaine: you have put one of 
your stockings on wrong side out ”—he had actually done 
so—was the only answer vouchsafed to his question. The 
speaker in this case was a doctor of the Sorbonne (brother 
to Boileau), present as guest. The story is told of La 
Fontaine, that egged on to groundless jealousy of his wife— 
a wife whom he never really loved, and whom he soon woule 
finally abandon,—he challenged a military friend of his to 
combat with swords. The friend was amazed, and, amazed, 
reluctantly fought with La Fontaine, whom he easily put at 
his mercy. ‘ Now, what is this for?” he demanded. ‘The 
public says you visit my house for my wife’s sake, not for 
mine,” said La Fontaine. ‘Then I never will come again.” 
“Far from it,” responds La Fontaine, seizing his friend’s 
hand, “Ihave satisfied the public. Now you must come 
to my house every day, orI will fight you again.” The two 
went back in company, and breakfasted together in mutual 
good humor. 

A trait or two more and there will have been enough of 
the man La Fontaine. It is said that when, on the death of 
Madame de la Sabliére, La Fontaine was homeless, he was 
met on the street by a friend, who exclaimed, “I was look- 
ing for you ; come to my house, and live with me!” “Iwas 
on the way there,” La Fontaine characteristically replied. At 
seventy, La Fontaine went through a process of “ conver- 
sion,” so called, in which he professed repentance of his sins. 
On the genuineness of this inward experience of La Fontaine, 
it is not for a fellow-creature of his, especially at this dis- 
tance of time, to pronounce. When he died, at seventy- 
three, Fénelon could say of him (in Latin), “La Fontaine is 
no more! He is no more; and with him have gone the 
playful jokes, the merry laugh, the artless graces, and the 
sweet Muses!” LaF ontaine’s earliest works were “ Contes,” 
so styled; that is, tales, or romances, ‘These are in charac- 
ter such that the subsequent happy change in manners, if not 
in morals, has made them unreadable, for their indecency. 
We nced concern ourselves only with the Fables, for it is on 


La Fontaine. 69 





these that La Fontaine’s fame securely rests. The basis of 
story in them was not generally original with La Fontaine. 
He took whatever fittest came to his hand. With much 
modesty he attributed all to Alsop and Phedrus. But in- 
vention of his own is not altogether wanting to his books of 
fables. Still, it is chiefly the consummate artful artlessness of 
the form that constitutes the individual merit of La Fontaine’s 
productions. With something, too, of the air of real poetry, 
he has undoubtedly invested his verse. 

We give, first, the brief fable which is said to have been 
the prime favorite of the author himself. It is the fable of 
“The Oak and the Reed.” Of.this fable French critics 
have not scrupled to speak in terms of almost the very high- 
est praise, Chamfort says, “ Let one consider, that, within 
the limit of thirty lines, La Fontaine, doing nothing but yield 
himself to the current of his story, has taken on every tone, 
that of poetry the most graceful, that of poetry the most 
lofty, and one will not hesitate to affirm, that, at the epoch 
at which this fable appeared, there was nothing comparable to 
it in the French language.” There are, to speak precisely, 
thirty-two lines in the fable. In this one case let us try rep- 
resenting La Fontaine’s compression by our English form, 
For the rest of our specimens, after a single further excep- 
tion, introduced, we confess, partly because it could be given 
in a graceful version by Bryant, we shall use Elizur Wright’s 
translation—a meritorious one, still master of the iield 
which, about fifty years ago, it entered as pioneer. Mr. 
Wright here expands La Fontaine’s thirty-two verses to it 
forty-four. ‘The additions are not ill-done, but they en- 
cumber somewhat the Attic neatness and simplicity of the 
original. We ought to say, that La Fontaine boldly broke 
with the tradition which had been making Alexandrines—lines 
of six feet—obligatory in French verse. He rhymes irregu- 
larly, at choice, and makes his verses long or short, as 
pleases him. The closing verse of the present piece is, in 
accordance with the intended majesty of the representation, 
an Alexandrine: 


70 Classic French Course in English. 





The Oak one day said to the Reed, 
“Justly might you dame Nature blame. 
A wren’s weight would bow down your frame; 
The lightest wind that chance may make 
i Dimple the surface of the lake 
Your head bends low indeed, 
The while, like Caucasus, my front 
To meet the branding sun is wont, 
Nay, more, to take the tempest’s brunt. 
A blast you feel, I feel a breeze. 
Had you been born beneath my roof, 
Wide-spread, of leafage weather-proof, 
Less had you known your life to tease ; 
I should have sheltered you from storm. 
But oftenest you rear your form 
On the moist limits of the realm of wind. 
Nature, methinks, against you sore has sinned.” 


“Your pity,” answers him the Reed, 
“Bespeaks you kind; but spare your pain; 
I more than you may winds disdain. 

I bend, and break not. You, indeed, 
Agaiust their dreadful strokes till now 
Have stood, nor tamed your back to bow: 
But wait we for the end.” 


Scarce had he spoke, 

When fiercely from the far Korizon broke 
The wildest of the children, fullest fraught 
With terror, that till then the North had brought. 

The tree holds good; the reed it bends. 

The wind redoubled might expends, 
And so well works that from his bed 
Him it uproots who nigh to heaven his head 
Held, and whose feet reached to the kingdom of the dead. 


Here is that fable of La Fontaine’s graced by the hand of 
Bryant upon it as translator. It is entitled “ Love and Folly:” 


Love’s worshipers alone can know 
The thousand mysteries that are his; 

His blazing torch, his twanging bow, 
His blooming age are mysteries, 


La Fontaine. 71 





A charming science—but the day 
Were all too short to con it o’er; 
So take of me this little lay, 
A sample of its boundless lore. 


As once, beneath the fragrant shade 
Of myrtles fresh, in heaven’s pure air, 

The children, Love and Folly, played— 
A quarrel rose betwixt the pair. 

Love said the gods should do him right— 
But Folly vowed to do it then, 

And struck him, o’er the orbs of sight, 
So hard he never saw again. 


His lovely mother's grief was deep, 
She called for vengeance on the deed ; 
A beauty does not vainly weep, 
Nor coldly does a mother plead. 
A shade came o’er the eternal bliss 
That fills the dwellers of the skies; 
Even stony-hearted Nemesis 
And Rhadamanthus wiped their eyes, 


“ Behold,” she said, “this lovely boy,” 
While streamed afresh her graceful tears, 
“Immortal, yet shut out from joy 
And sunshine all his future years. 
The child can never take, you see 
A single step without a staff— 
The harshest punishment would be 
Too lenient for the crime by half.” 


. . All said that Love had suffered wrong, 
And well that wrong should be repaid ; 
Then weighed the public interest long, 
And long the party’s interest weighed, 
And tlius decreed the court above— 
“Since Love is blind from Folly’s blow, 
Let Folly be the guide of Love, 
Whiere’er the boy may choose to go.” 


In the fable of the “ Rat Retired from the World,” La Fon- 
taine rallies the monks. With French finesse he hits his mark 


3 seh Classie French Course in English. 





by expressly avoiding it. 


“What think you I mean by my 


disobliging rat? A monk? No, but a Mahometan devotee; 
I take it for granted that a monk is always ready with his 


help to the needful ! ” 


The sage Levantines have a tale 
About a rat that weary grew 
Of all the cares which life assail, 
And to a Holland clieese withdrew. 
His solitude was there profound, 
Extending through his world so round, 
Our hermit lived on that within; 
And soon his industry had been 
With claws and teeth so good, 
That in his novel hermitage 
He had in store, for wants of age, | 
Both house and livelihood. 
What more could any rat desire? 
He grew fut, fair, and round. 
God’s blessings thus redound 
To those who in his vows retire. 
One day this personage devout, 
Whose kindness none might doubt, 
Was asked, by certain delegates 
That came from Rat-United-States, 
For some small aid, for they 
To foreign parts were on their way, 
For succor in the great cat-war: 
Ratopolis beleaguered sore, 
Their whole republic drained and poor, 
No morsel in their scrips they bore. 
Slight boon they craved, of succor sure 
In days at utmost three or four. 
“My friends,” the hermit said, 
“To worldly things 1’m dead. 
How can a poor recluse 
To such a mission be of use? 
What can he do but pray 
That God will aid it on its way? 
And so, my friends, it is my prayer 
That God will have you in his care.” 
His well-fed saintship said no more 
But in their faces shut the door, 


La Fontaine. 73 





What think you, reader, is the service, 
For which I use this niggard rat? 

To paint a monk? No, but a dervise. 
A monk, I think, however fat, 
Must be more bountiful than that. 


The fable entitled “ Death and the Dying,” is much admired 
for its union of pathos with wit. ‘The Two Doves,” is another 
of La Fontaine’s more tender inspirations. ‘The Mogul’s 
Dream ” is a somewhat ambitious flight of the fabulist’s muse. 
On the whole, however, the masterpiece among the fables of 
La Fontaine is that of “The Animals Sick of the Plague.” 
Such at least is the opinion of critics in general. The idea 
of this fable is not original with La Fontaine. The homilists. 
of the middle ages used a similar fiction to enforce on priests 
the duty of impartiality in administering the sacrament, so 
called, of confession. We give this famous fable as our clos- 
ing specimen of La Fontaine : 


The sorest ill that Heaven hath 
Sent on this lower world in wrath— 
The plague (to call it by its name), 

One single day of which 

Would Pluto’s ferryman enrich, 
Waged war on beasts, both wild and tame. 
They died not all, but all were sick: 
No hunting now, by force or trick, 

To save what might so soon expire. 
No food excited their desire : 
Nor wolf nor fox now watched to slay 
The innocent and tender prey. 
The turtles fled, 
So love and therefore joy were dead. 
The lion council held, and said, 
‘My friends, I do believe 
This awful scourge, for which we grieve, 
Is for our sins a punishment 
Most righteously by Heaven sent. 
Let us our guiltiest beast resign 
A sacrifice to wrath divine. 
Perhaps this offering, truly small, 
May gain the life and health of all. 


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By history we find it noted 
That lives have been just so devoted. 
Then let us all turn eyes within, 
And ferret out the hidden sin. 
Himself let no one spare nor flatter, 
But make clean conscience in the matter. 
For me, my appetite has played the glutton 
Too much and often upon mutton. 
What harm had e’er my victims done ? 
I answer, truly, None. 
Perhaps, sometimes, by hunger pressed, 
I’ve eat the shepherd with the rest. 
I yield myself if need there be; 
And yet I think, in equity, 
Each should confess his sins with me; 
For laws of right and justice cry, 
The guiltiest alone should die.” 
“ Sire,” said the fox, ‘your majesty 
Is humbler than a king should be, 
And over-squeamish in the case. 
What! eating stupid sheep a crime? 
No, never, sire, at any time. 
It rather was an act of grace, 
A mark of honor to their race. 
And as to shepherds, one may swear, 
The fate your majesty describes 
Is recompense less full than fair 
For such usurpers o’er our tribes.” 


Thus Renard glibly spoke, 
And loud applause from listeners broke. 
Of neither tiger, boar, nor bear, 
Did any keen inquiry dare 
To ask for crimes of high degree; 
The fighters, biters, scratchers, all 
From every mortal sin were free ; 
The very dogs, both great and small, 
Were saints, as far as dogs could be. 


The ass, confessing in his turn, 
Thus spoke in tones of deep concern: 
“T happened through a mead to pass; 
The monks, its owners, were at mass: 
Keen hunger, leisure, tender grass, 


La Fontaine. 45 





And, add to these the devil, too, 
All tempted me the deed to do. 
I browsed the bigness of my tongue: 
Since truth must out, I own it wrong.” 
On this, a hue and cry arose, 
As if the beasts were all his foes. 
A wolf, haranguing lawyer-wise, 
Denounced the ass for sacrifice— 
The bald-pate, scabby, ragged lout, 
By whom the plague had come, no doubt. 
His fault was judged a hanging crime. 
What! eat another’s grass? Oh, shame! 
The noose of rope, and death sublime, 
For that offense were all too tame! 
And soon poor Grizzle felt the same. 
Thus human courts acquit the strong, 
And doom the weak as therefore wrong. 


It is suitable to add, in conclusion, that La Fontaine isa cru- 
cial author for disclosing the irreconcilable difference that 
_ exists, at bottom, between the Englishman’s and the French- 
man’s idea of poetry. No English-speaker, heir of Shake- 
speare and Milton, will ever be able to satisfy a Frenchman 
with admiration such as he can conscientiously profess for the 
poetry of La Fontaine. 


VII. 
MOLIERE. 


1623-1673. 


MotrerE is confessedly the greatest writer of comedy 
in the world. Greek Menander might have disputed the 
palm; but Menander’s works have perished, and his greatness 
must be guessed. Who knows but we guess him too great? 
Moliére’s works survive, and his greatness may be measured. 

We have stinted our praise. Mboliére is not only the fore- 
most name in a certain department of literature ; he is one 


76 Classie French Course in English. 





of the foremost names in literature. The names are few 
on which critics are willing to bestow this distinction. 
But critics generally agree in bestowing this distinction on 
Moliére. 

Moliére’s comedy is by no means mere farce. Farces he 
wrote, undoubtedly; and some element of farce, perhaps, en- 
tered to qualify nearly every comedy that flowed from his pen. 
But it is not for his farce that Moliére is rated one of the few 
greatest producers of literature. Moliére’s comedy consti- 
tutes to Moliére the patent that it does, of high degree in 
genius, not because it provokes laughter, but because, amid 
laughter provoked, it not seldom reveals, as if with flashes of 
lightning —lightning playful, indeed, but lightning that 
might have been deadly—the “secrets of the- nethermost 
abyss” of human nature. Not human manners merely, those 
of a time, or a race, but human attributes, those of all times, 
and of all races, are the things with which, in his higher 
comedies, Moliére deals. Some transient whim of fashion 
may in these supply to him the mould of form that he uses, 
but it is human nature itself that supplies to Moliére the sub- 
stance of his dramatic creations. Now and again, if you 
read Moliére wisely and deeply, you find your laughter at 
comedy fairly frozen in your throat, by a gelid horror seizing 
you, to feel that these follies or these crimes displayed belong 
to that human nature, one and the same everywhere and al- 
ways, of which also you yourself partake. Comedy, Dante, 
too, called his poem, which included the Jnferno. And a_ 
Dantesque quality, not of method, but of power, is to be felt 
in Moliére. 

This character in Moliére the writer accords with the char- 
acter of the man Moliére. It might not have seemed natural 
to say of Moliére, as was said of Dante, “There goes the 
man that has been in hell.” But Moliére was melancholy 
enough in temper and in mien to have well inspired an excla- 
mation such as, “‘ There goes the man that has seen the human 
heart.” 

A poet as well as a dramatist, his own fellow-countrymen, at 


Moliére. 77 





least, feel Moliére to be. In Victor Hugo’s list of the eight 
greatest poets of all time, two are Hebrews (Job and Isaiah), 
two Greeks (Homer and Atschylus), one is a Roman (Lucre- 
tius), one an Italian (Dante), one an Englishman (Shakespeare) 
—seven. The eighth could hardly fail to be a Frenchman, 
and that Frenchman is Moliére. Mr. Swinburne might per- 
haps make the list nine, but he would certainly include Vic- 
tor Hugo himself. 

Curiously enough, Moliére is not this great writer’s real 
name. It is a stage name. It was assumed by the bearer 
when he was about twenty-four years of age, on occasion of 
his becoming one in a strolling band of players—in 1646 or 
thereabout. This band, originally composed of amateurs, 
developed into a professional dramatic company, which passed 
through varios transformations, until, from being at first 
grandiloquently self-styled, L’Illustre Théatre, it was, twenty 
years after, recognized by the national title of Théatre Fran- 
gais. Moliére’s real name was Jean Baptiste Poquelin. 

Young Poquelin’s bent, early encouraged by seeing plays 
and ballets, was strongly toward the stage. The drama, un- 
der the quickening patronage of Louis XIII.’s lordly minister, 
Cardinal Richelieu, was a great public interest of those times 
in Paris. Moliére’s evil star, too, it was perhaps in part that 
brought him back to Paris, from Orleans. He admired a cer- 
tain actress in the capital. She became the companion— 
probably not innocent companion—of his wandering life as 
actor. A sister of this actress—a sister young enough to be 
daughter, instead of sister—Molidre finally married. She led 
her jealous husband a wretched conjugal life. A peculiarly 
dark tradition of shame, connected with Moliére’s marriage, 
has lately been to a good degree dispelled. But it is not pos- 
sible to redeem this great man’s fame to chastity and honor. 
He paid heavily, in like misery of his own, for whatever pangs 
of jealousy he inflicted. There was sometimes true tragedy 
for himself hidden within the comedy that he acted for others. 
(Moliére, to the very end of his life, acted in the comedies 
that he wrote.) When some play of his represented the tor- 


78 Classie French Course in English. 





ments of jealousy in the heart of a husband, it was probably 
not so much acting, as it was real life, that the spectators saw 
proceeding on the stage between Moliére and his wife, con- 
fronted with each other in performing the piece. 

Despite his faults, Molitre was cast in a noble, generous 
mold, of character as well as of genius. Expostulated with 
for persisting to appear on the stage when his health was 
such that he put his life at stake in so doing, he replied that 
the men and women of his company depended for their bread 
on the play’s going through, and appear he would. He act- 
ually died an hour or so after playing the part of the Imag- 
inary Invalid in his comedy of that name. That piece was 
the last work of his pen. . 

Moliére produced in all some thirty dramatic pieces, from 
among which we select a few of the most ‘celebrated for 
brief description and illustration. 

The “Bourgeois Gentilhomme” (“Shopkeeper turned 
Gentleman”) partakes of the nature of the farce quite as 
much as it does of the comedy. But it is farce such as only 
aman of genius could produce. In it Moliére ridicules the 
airs and affectations of a rich man vulgarly ambitious to fig- 
ure in asocial rank too exalted for his birth, his breeding, 
or his merit. Jourdain is the name under which Moliére 
satirizes such a character. We give a fragment from one of 
the scenes. M. Jourdain is in process of fitting himself for 
that higher position in society to which he aspires. He will 
equip himself with the necessary knowledge. To this end he 
employs a professor of philosophy to come and give him les- 
sons at his house : 


M. Jourdain. I have the greatest desire in the world to be learned ; 
and it vexes me more than I can tell, that my father and mother did not 
make me learn thoroughly all the sciences when I was young. 

Professor of Philosophy. This is a praiseworthy feeling. Nam sine doc- 
trina vita est quasi mortis imago. You understand this, and you have, no 
doubt, a knowledge of Latin ? 

M. Jour. Yes; but act as ifIhad none. Explain to me the meaning of it- 

Prof. Phil. The meaning of it is, that, without science, life is an im- 
age of death. ' 


Moliére. 79 





M. Jour. That Latin is quite right. 

Prof. Phil, Have you any principles, any rudiments, of science ? 

M. Jour. Oh, yes! I can read and write. 

Prof. Phil. With what would you like to begin? Shall I teach you 
logic ? 

M. Jour. And what may this logic be? 

Prof. Phil. Tt is that which teaches us the three operations of the 
mind. 

M. Jour. What are they—these three operations of the mind? _ 

Prof. Phil. The first, the second, and the third. The first is to con- 
ceive well by means of universals; the second, to judge well by means 
of categories; and the third, to draw a conclusion aright by means of the 
figures Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferio, Baralipton, etc. 

M. Jour. Pooh! what repulsive words! This logic does not by any 
means suit me. Teach me something more enlivening. 

Prof. Phil. Will you learn moral philosophy ? 

M. Jour. Moral philosophy? 

Prof. Phil. Yes. 

M. Jour. What does it say, this moral philosophy ? 

Prof. Phil. It treats of happiness, teaches men to moderate their pas- 
sions, and— 

M. Jour. No, none of that. Iam devilishly hot-tempered, and, moral- 
ity or no morality, I like to give full vent to my anger whenever I have 
a mind to it. 

Prof. Phil. Would you like to learn physics? 

M. Jour. And what have physics to say for themselves? 

Prof. Phil. Physics is that science which explains the principles of 
natural things and the properties of bodies; which discourses of the nat- 
ure of the elements, of metals, minerals, stones, plants, and animals; 
which teaches us the cause of all the meteors, the rainbow, the tgnis fatuus, 
comets, lightning, thunder, thunderbolts, rain, snow, hail, and whirlwinds. 

M. Jour. There is too much hullaballoo in all that, too much riot and 
rumpus. 

Prof. Phil. Very good. 

M. Jour, And now I want to intrust you with a great secret, Iam 
in love with a lady of quality; and I should be glad if you would help 
me to write something to her in a short letter which I mean to drop at 
her feet. 

Prof. Phil. Very well. 

M. Jour. That will be gallant, will it not? ; 

Prof. Phil. Undoubtedly. Is it verse you wish to write to her? 

M. Jour. Oh, no! not verse. 

Prof. Phil. You only wish prose ? 

M, Jour. No, I wish for neither yerse nor prose, 


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Prof. Phil. It must be one or the other. 

M. Jour. Why? 

Prof. Phil. Because, sir, there is nothing by which we can express 
ourselves except prose or verse. 

M. Jour. There is nothing but prose or verse? 

Prof. Phil. No, sir. Whatever is not prose, is verse; and whatever 
is not verse, is prose. 

M. Jour. And when we speak, what is that, then? 

Prof. Phil. Prose. 

M. Jour. What! when I say, “ Nicole, bring me my slippers, and give 
me my nightcap,” is that prose ? 

Prof. Phil. Yes, sir. 

'  M. Jour. Upon my word, I have been speaking prose these forty 
years without being aware of it; and I am under the greatest obligation 
to you for informing me ofit. Well, then, I wish to write to her in a 
letter, “‘ Fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die of love”; but 
I would have this worded in a gallant manner, turned genteelly. 

Prof. Phil. Say that the fire of her eyes has reduced your heart to 
ashes; that you suffer day and night for her the torments of a— 

M. Jour. No, no, no, I don’t wish any of that. I simply wish what 
I tell you—“ Fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die of love.” 

Prof. Phil. Still, you might amplify the thing a little. 

M. Jour. No, I tell you, I will have nothing but these very words in 
the letter; but they must be put in a fashionable way, and arranged as 
they should be. Pray show me a little, so that I may see the different 
ways in which they can be put. ; 

Prof. Phil. They may be put first of all, as you have said, “ Fair 
Marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die of love; ”’ or else, ‘‘ Of love 
die make me, fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes; ” or, “ Your beauti- 
ful eyes of love make me, fair Marchioness, die;” or, “ Die of love your 
beautiful eyes, fair Marchioness, make me; ” or else, ‘“‘ Me make your beau- 
tiful eyes die, fair Marchioness, of love.” 

M. Jour. But of all these ways, which is the best? 

Prof. Phil. The one you said—‘ Fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes 
make me die of love.” 

M. Jour, Yet I have never studied, and I did all right off at the first 
shot. 


The “ Bourgeois Gentilhomme” is a very amusing comedy 
throughout. 

From “ Les Femmes Savantes ” (“'The Learned Women”) 
—«The Blue-Stockings,” we might perhaps freely render 
the title—we present one scene to indicate the nature of the 


Moliére. , 81 





comedy. There had grown to be a fashion in Paris, among 
certain women high in social rank, of pretending to the dis- 
tinction of skill in literary criticism, and of proficiency in 
science. It was the Hétel de Rambouillet reduced to absurd- 
ity. That fashionable affectation Moliére made the subject 
of his comedy, “The Learned Women.” 

In the following extracts, Moliére satirizes, under the name 
of Trissotin, a contemporary writer, one Cotin. The poem 
which Trissotin reads, for the learned women to criticise and 
admire, is an actual production of this gentleman. Imagine 
the domestic coterie assembled, and Trissotin, the poet, their 
guest. Heis present, prepared to regale them with what he 
calls his sonnet. We need to explain that the original poem 
is thus inscribed: “'To Mademoiselle de Longueville, now 
Duchess of Namur, on her Quartan Fever.” The conceit of 
the sonneteer is that the fever isan enemy luxuriously lodged 
in the lovely person of its victim, and there insidiously plot- 
ting against her life : 


Trissotin. Sonnet to the Princess Urania on her Fever. 


Your prudence sure is fast asleep, 
That thus luxuriously you keep 
And lodge magnificently so 

Your very hardest-hearted foe. 


Bélise. Ah! what a pretty beginning ! 
Armande. What acharming turn it has! 
Philaminte. He alone possesses the talent of making easy verses. 
Arm. We must yield to prudence fast asleep. 
Bél. Lodge one's very hardest-hearted foe is full of charms for me. 
Phil. I like luxuriously and magnificently: these two adverbs joined 
together sound admirably.’ 
Bél. Let us hear the rest. 
Triss. Your prudence sure is fast asleep, 
That thus luxuriously you keep 
And lodge magnificently so 
Your very hardest-hearted foe. 
Arm. Prudence fast asleep. 
Bél. Tolodge one’s foe. 
ni v Luauriously and magnificently. 
4 


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Triss. Drive forth that foe, whate’er men say, 
From out your chamber, decked so gay, 
Where, ingrate vile, with murderous knife, 
Bold she assails your lovely life. 

Bél. Ah! gently. Allow me to breathe, I beseech you. 

Arm. Give us time to admire, I beg. 

Phil. One feels, at hearing these verses, an indescribable something 
which goes through one’s inmost soul, and makes one feel quite faint. 

Arm. Drive forth that foe, whate’er men say, 

From out your chamber, decked so gay— 
How prettily chamber, decked so gay, is said here! And with what wit 
the metaphor is introduced! 

Phil. Drive forth that foe, whate’er men say. 

Ah! in what an admirable taste that whate’er men say is! To my mind, 
the passage is invaluable. 

Arm. My heart is also in love with whate’er men say. 

Bél. Iam of your opinion: whate’er men say is a happy expression 

Arm. I wish I had written it. 

Bél. It is worth a whole poem. 

Phil. But do you, like me, thoroughly understand the wit of it? 

Arm. and Bél. Onn! Oh! 

Phil. Drive forth that foe, whate’er men say. 

Although another should take the fever’s part, pay no attention; laugh 
at the gossips. 

Drive forth that foe, whate’er men say, 

Whate’er men say, whate’er men say. 
This whate'er men say, says a great deal more than it seems. I do not 
know if every one is like me, but I discover in it a hundred meanings. 

Bél. It is true that it says more than its size seems to imply. 

Phil. (to Trissotin.) But when you wrote this charming whate’er men 
say, did you yourself understand all its energy? Did you realize all it 
tells us? And did you then think that you were writing something so 

witty? 

Triss. Ah! ah! 

Arm. I have likewise the ingrate in my head—this ungrateful, un- 
just, uncivil fever that ill-treats people who entertain her. 

Phil. In short, both the stanzas are admirable. Let us come quickly 
to the triplets, I pray. 

Arm. Ah! once more, what'er men say, I beg. 

Triss. Drive forth that foe, whate’er men say— 

Phil., Arm., and Bél. Whate’er men say! 

Triss. From out your chamber, decked so gay— 

Phil., Arm. and Bél. Chamber decked so gay ! 


Moliére. 83 





Triss. Where, ingrate vile, with murderous knife— 
Phil., Arm., and Bél. That ingrate fever | 
Triss. Bold she assails your lovely life. 
Triss, Your lovely life! 
Arm. and Bél. Ah! 
Triss. What! reckless of your ladyhood, 
Still fiercely seeks to shed your blood— 
Phil., Arm. and Bél. Ah! 
Triss, And day and night to work you harm. 
When to the baths sometime you’ve brouglit her, 
No more ado, with your own arm 
Whelm her and drown her in the water. 
Phil. Ah! It is quite overpowering. 
Bel. 1 faint. 
Arm. I die from pleasure. 
Phil. A thousand sweet thrills seize one. 
Arm. When to the baths sometime you've brought her, 
Bél. No more ado, with your own arm. 
Phil. Whelm her and drown her in the water. 
With your own arm, drown her there in the baths. 
Arm. In your verses we meet at each step with charming beauty. 
Bel. One promenades through them with rapture. 
Phil. One treads on fine things only. 
Arm. They are little lanes all strewn with roses, 
Triss. Then, the sonnet seems to you— 
Phil. Admirable, new; and never did any one make any thing more 
beautiful. ; 
Bél. (to Henriette). What! my niece, you listen to what has been read 
without emotion! You play there but a sorry part! 
Hen. We each of us play the best part we can, my aunt; and to be a 
wit does not depend on our will. 
Triss. My verses, perhaps, are tedious to you. 
Hen. No. Ido not listen. 
Phil. Ah! Let us hear the epigram. 


But our readers, we think, will consent to spare the epi- 
gram. They will relish, however, a fragment taken from a 
subsequent part of the same protracted scene. The conver- 
sation has made the transition from literary criticism to 
philosophy, in Moliére’s time a fashionable study, rendered 
such by the contemporary genius and fame of Descartes, 
Armande resents the limitations imposed upon her sex: 


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Arm. It is insulting our sex too grossly to limit our intelligence to the 
power of judging of a skirt, of the make of a garment, of the beauties of 
lace, or of a new brocade. 

Bél. We must rise above this shameful condition, and aver pro- 
claim our emancipation. 

Triss. Every one knows my respect for the fairer sex, and that, if I 
render homage to the brightness of their eyes, I also honor the splendor 
of their intellect. 

Phil. And our sex does you justice in this respect; but we will show 
to certain minds who treat us with proud contempt, that women also 
have knowledge; that, like men, they can hold learned meetings—regu- 
lated, too, by better rules; that they wish to unite what elsewhere is kept 
apart, join noble language to deep learning, reveal nature’s laws by a 
thousand experiments; and, on all questions proposed, admit every party, 
and ally themselves to none. 

Triss. For order, I prefer peripateticism. 

Phil. ¥or abstractions, I love platonism. 

Arm. Epicurus pleases me, for his tenets are solid. 

Bél. Tagree with the doctrine of atoms; but I find it difficult to un- 
derstand a vacuum, and I much prefer subtile matter. 

Triss. I quite agree with Descartes about magnetism. 

Arm. Ilike his vortices. 

Phil. And I, his falling worlds. 

Arm. I long to see our assembly opened, and to distinguish our- 
selves by some great discovery. 

Triss. Much is expected from your enlightened knowledge, for nature 
has hidden few things from you. 

Phil. For my part, I have, without boasting, already made one dis- 
covery; I have plainly seen men in the moon. 

Bél. I have not, I believe as yet, quite distinguished men, but 1 have 
seen steeples as plainly as I see you. 

Arm. In addition to natural philosophy, we will dive into grammar, — 
history, verse, ethics, and polities, 

Phil. I findin ethics charms which delight my heart; it was formerly 
the admiration of great geniuses; but I give the preference to the Stoics, 
and I think nothing so grand as their founder. 


“Les Précieuses Ridicules” is an earlier and lighter treat- 
ment of the same theme. The object of ridicule in both these 
pieces was a lapsed and degenerate form of what originally 
was a thing worthy of respect, and even of praise. At the 
Hotel de Rambouillet, conversation was cultivated as a fine 
art. There was, no doubt, something overstrained in the 


Moliére. 85 





standards which the ladies of that circle enforced. Their 
mutual communication was all conducted in a peculiar style 
of language, the natural deterioration of which was into a 
kind of euphuism, such as English readers will remember to 
have seen exemplified in Walter Scott’s Sir Piercie Shafton. 
These ladies called each other, with demonstrative fondness, 
“ Ma précieuse.” Hence at last the term précieuse as a designa- 
tion of ridicule. Madame de Sévigné was a précieuse. But 
she, with many of her peers, was too rich in sarcastic com- 
mon sense to bea précieuse ridicule. Moliére himself, thrifty 
master of policy that he was, took pains to explain that he 
did not satirize the real thing, but only the affectation. 

“'Tartuffe, or the Impostor,” is perhaps the most celebrated 
of all Moliére’s plays. Scarcely comedy, scarcely tragedy, it 
partakes of both characters. Like tragedy, serious in pur- 
pose, it has a happy ending like comedy. Pity and terror 
are absent; or, if not quite absent, these sentiments are 
present raised only to a pitch distinctly below the tragic. 
Indignation is the chief passion excited, or detestation, per- 
haps, rather than indignation. This feeling is provided at 
last with its full satisfaction in the condign punishment vis- 
ited on the impostor. 

The original “'Tartuffe,” like the most of Molitre’s come- 
dies, is written in rhymed verse. We could not, with any 
effort, make the English-reading student of Moliére sufti- 
ciently feel how much is lost when the form is lost which the 
creations of this great genius took, in their native French, 
under his own master hand. A satisfactory metrical render- 
ing is out of the question. The sense, at least, if not the 
incommunicable spirit, of the original, is very well given in 
Mr. C. H. Wall’s version, which we use. 

The story of “Tartuffe ” is briefly this: Tartuffe, the hero, 
is a pure villain. He mixes no adulteration of good in his 
composition. He is hypocrisy itself, the strictly genuine 
article. ‘T'artuffe has completely imposed upon one Orgon, a 
man of wealth and standing. Orgon, with his wife, and with 
his mother, in fact, believes in him absolutely. These people 


86 Classic French Course in English. 





have received the canting rascal into their house, and are 
about to bestow upon him their daughter in marriage. The fol- 
lowing scene from act first shows the skill with which Moliére 
could exhibit, in a few strokes of bold exaggeration, the in- 
fatuation of Orgon’s regard for Tartuffe. Orgon has been 
absent from home. He returns, and meets Cléante, his 
brother, whom, in his eagerness, he begs to excuse his not 
answering a question just addressed to him: 


Orgon (to Cléante). Brother, pray excuse me: you will kindly allow meto 
allay my anxiety by asking news of the family. (Zo Dorine, a maid- 
servant.) Has every thing gone on well these last two days? What has 
happened? How is every body? 

Dor. The day before yesterday our mistress was very feverish from 
morning to night, and suffered from a most criacaapeet 5 headache. 

Org. And Tartuffe? 

Dor, Tartuffe! He is wonderfully well, stout; and fat with blooming 
cheeks and ruddy lips. 

Org. Poor man! 

Dor. In the evening she felt very faint, and the pain th her head was 
so great that she could not touch any thing at supper. 

Org. And Tartuffe? 

Dor. He ate his supper by himself before her, and very devoutly de- 
voured a brace of partridges and half a leg of mutton hashed. 

Org. Poor mani 

Dor. She spent the whole of the night without getting one wink of 
sleep: she was very feverish, and we had to sit up with her until the 
morning. 

Org. And Tartuffe ? 

Dor, Overcome by a pleasant sleepiness, he passed from the table to 
his room and got at once into his warmed bed, where he slept comfortably 
till the next morning. 

Org. Poor man! 

Dor. At last, yielding to our persuasions, she consented to be bled, 
and immediately felt relieved. 

Org. And Tartuffe? 

Dor. He took heart right valiantly, and fortifying his soul against all 
evils, to make up for the blood which our lady had lost drank at break- 
fast four large bumpers of wine. 

Org. Poor man! 

Dor. Now, at last, they are both well: and I will go and tell our lady 
how glad you are to hear of her recovery. 


Molieré, 87 





Tartuffe repays the trust and love of his benefactor by 
making improper advances to that benefactor’s wife. Or- 
gon’s son, who does not share his father’s confidence in Tar- 
tuffe, happens to be an unseen witness of the man’s infamous 
conduct. He exposes the hypocrite to Orgon, with the result 
of being himself expelled from the house for his pains; while 
Tartuffe, in recompense for the injury done to his feelings, is 
presented with a gift-deed of Orgon’s estate. But now Or- 
gon’s wife contrives to let her husband see and hear for him- 
self the vileness of Tartuffe. This done, Orgon confronts 
the villain, and, with just indignation, orders him out of his 
house. Tartuffe reminds Orgon that the shoe is on the other 
foot; that he is himself now owner there, and that it is Or- 
gon, instead of Tartuffe, who must go. Orgon has an inter- 
view with his mother, who is exasperatingly sure still that 
Tartuffe is a maligned good man: 


Madame Pernelle, Ican never believe, my son, that he would commit 
so base an action. 

Org. What? 

Per. Good people are always subject:to envy. 

Org. What do you mean, mother? 

Per. That you live after a strange sort here, and that I am but too 
well aware of the ill-will they all bear him. 

Org. What has this ill-will to do with what I have just told you? 

Per. I have told it you a hundred times when you were young, that 
in this world virtue is ever liable to persecution, and that, although the en- 
vious die, envy never dies. 

Org. But what has this to do with what has happened to-day ? 

Per. They have concocted a hundred foolish stories against him. 

Org. I have already told you that I saw it all myself. 

Per. The malice of evil-disposed persons is very great. 

Org. You would make me swear, mother! I tell you that I saw his 
audacious attempt with my own eyes. 

Per, Evil tongues have always some venom to pour forth; and here 
below, there is nothing proof against them. 

Org. _Youare maintaining a very senseless argument. I saw it, I tell you 
—saw it with my own eyes! what you can call s-a-w,saw! Must I dinit 
over and over into your ears, and shout as loud as half a dozen people? 

Per, Gracious goodness! appearances often deceive us! We must 
not always judge by what we see. 


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Org. shall go mad! 

Per, Weare by nature prone to judge wrongly, and good is often mis- 
taken for evil. 

Org. I ought to look upon his desire of seducing my wife as char- 
itable? 

Per. You ought to have good reasons before you accuse another, and 
you should have waited till you were quite sure of the fact. 

Org. Heaven save the mark! how could I be more sure? I suppose, 
mother, I ought to have waited till—you will make me say something 
foolish. 

Per. In short, his soul is possessed with too pure a zeal; and I can- 
not possibly conceive that he would think of attempting what you accuse 
him of. , 

Org. If you were not my mother, I really don’t know what I might 
now say to you, you make me so savage. 


The short remainder of the scene has for its important idea 
the suggestion that, under the existing circumstances, some 
sort of peace ought to be patched up between Orgon and 
Tartuffe. Meantime one Loyal is observed coming, where- 
upon the fourth scene of act fifth opens : 


Loy. (to Dorine at the farther part of the stage). Good-day, my dear 
sister; pray let me speak to your master. 

Dor. He is with friends, and I do not think he can see any one 
just now. 

Loy. I would not be intrusive. I feel sure that he will find nothing 
unpleasant in my visit; in fact, I come for something which will be very 
gratifying to him. 

Dor. What is your name? 

Loy. Only tell him that I come from Mr. Tariuffe for his benefit. 

Dor, (toOrgon). It is a man who comes in a civil way from Mr. Tar- 
tuffe, on some business which will make you glad, he says. 

Clé. (to Orgon), You must see who it is and what the man wants. 

Org. (to Cléante). He is coming, perhaps, to settle matters between us 
in a friendly way. How, in this case, ought I to beliave to him? 

Clé. Don't show any resentment, and, if he speaks of an agreement, 
listen to him. 

Loy. (to Orgon). Your servant, sir. May heaven punish whoever 
wrongs you; and may it be as favorable to you, sir, as I wish! 

Org. (aside to Cléante). This pleasant beginning agrees with my con- 
jectures, and argues some sort of reconciliation. 

Joy. All your family was always dear to me, and I served your father. 


Moliére. 89 





Org. 1am sorry and ashamed to say that I do not know who you are, 
neither do I remember your name. 

Loy. My name is Loyal; I was born in Normandy, and am a royal 
bailiff in spite of envy. For the last forty years I have had the good for- 
tune to fill the office, thanks to heaven, with great credit; and I come, 
sir, with your leave, to serve you the writ of a certain order. 

Org. What! you are here— 

Ioy. Gently, sir, I beg. It is merely a summons—a notice for you to 
leave this place, you and yours; to take away all your goods and chattels, 
and make room for others, without delay or adjournment, as hereby 
decreed. 

Org. I! leave this place? . 

Loy. Yes, sir, if you please. The house incontestably belongs, as you 
are well aware, to the good Mr. Tartuffe. He is now Jord and master of 
your estates, according to a deed I have in my keeping. It is in due 
form, and cannot be challenged. 

Damis (to Mr. Loyal). This great impudence is, indeed, worthy of all 
admiration. 

Loy. (toDamis.) Sir, Ihave nothing at all to do with you. (Pointing to 
Orgon.) My business is with this gentleman. He is tractable and gente, and 
knows too well the duty of a gentleman to try to oppose authority, 

Org. But— 

Loy. Yes, sir; I know that you would not, for any thing, show con- 
tumacy; and that you will allow me, like a reasonable man, to execute 
the orders I have received. 


The scene gives in conclusion some spirited byplay of 
asides and interruptions from indignant members of the fam- 
ily. Then follows scene fifth, one exchange of conversation 
from which will sufficiently indicate the progress of the plot : 


Org. Well, mother, you see whether I am right; and you can judge 
of the rest by the writ. Do you at last acknowledge his rascality ? 
Per. Jam thunderstruck, and can scarcely believe my eyes and ears. 
The next scene introduces Valére, the noble lover of that 
daughter whom the infatuated father was bent on sacrificing 
to Tartuffe. Valére comes to announce that Tartuffe, the vil- 
lain, has accused Orgon to the king. Orgon must fly. Va- 
lére offers him his own carriage and money—will, in fact, 
himself keep him company till he reaches a place of safety. 
As Orgon, taking hasty leave of his family, turns to go, he is 
encountered by—the following scene will show whom: . 


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Tar, (stopping Orgon.) Gently, sir, gently; not so fast, I- beg. You 
have not far to go to find a lodging, and you are a prisoner in the king’s 
name, 

Org. Wretch! you had reserved this shaft for the last; by it you fin- 
ish me, and crown all your perfidies. 

Tar. Your abuse has no power to disturb me, and I know how to:suf- 
fer every thing for the sake of heaven. 

Clé. Your moderation is really great, we must acknowledge. 

Da. How impudently the infamous wretch sports with heaven! 

Tar. Your anger cannot move me. I have no other wish but to fulfill 
my duty. 

Marianne. You may cluim- great glory from the performance of this 
duty: it is a very honorable employment for you. 

Tar. The employment cannot be otherwise than glorious, when it 
comes from the power that sends me here. 

Org. But do you remember that my charitable hand, ungrateful 
scoundrel, raised you from a state of misery ? ; 

Tar. Yes, I know what help I have received from you; but the in- 
terest of my king is my first duty. The just obligation of this sacred duty 
stifles in my heart all other claims; and I would sacrifice to it friend, 
wife, relations, and myself with them. . 

Elmire. The impostor! 

Dor. With what treacherous cunning he makes a cloak of all that 
men revere! ... : 

Tar. (to the Officer). I beg of you, sir, to deliver me from all this 
noise, and to act according to the orders you have received. 

Officer. IT have certainly put off too long the discharge of my duty, 
and you very rightly remind me of it. To execute my order, follow me 
immediately to the prison in which a place is assigned to you. 

Tar. Who? I, sir? 

Officer. Yes, you. 

Tar. Why to prison? 

Officer. To you I have no account to render. (Zo Orgon.) Pray, 
sir, recover from your great alarm. We live under aking [Louis XIV.] 
who is an enemy to fraud—a king who can read the heart, and whom all 
the arts of impostors cannot deceive. His great mind, endowed with deli- 
cate discernment, at all times sees things in their true light. .. . He an- 
nuls, by his sovereign will, the terms of the contract by which you gave 
him [Tartuffe] your property. He moreover forgives you this secret 
offense in which you were involved by the flight of your friend. This to 
reward the zeal which you once showed for him in maintaining his rights, 
and to prove that his heart, when it is least expected, knows how to 
recompense a good action, Merit with him is never lost, and he remem- 
bers: good better than evil, 


Moliere. - 491 





Dor. Heaven be thanked! 

Per. Ah! I breathe again. 

El. What a favorable end to our troubles! 

Mar. Who would have foretold it ? 

Org. (to Tartuffe as the Officer leads him off). Ah, wretch! now 
you are— 


Tartuffe thus disposed of, the play promptly ends with a 
vanishing glimpse afforded us of a happy marriage in pros- 
pect for Valére with the daughter. 

“The Tartuffian Age” is the title of a late Italian book 
admirably translated into English by an American, Mr. W. 
A. Nettleton. That such should be the Italian author’s 
chosen title for his work incidentally shows how cosmopolitan 
is our French dramatist’s fame. The book is a kindly- 
caustic satire on the times in which we live, found by the 
satirist to be abundant in the quality of Tartuffe, that leaven 
of the Pharisees which is hypocrisy. 

Moliére is said to have had a personal aim in drawing the 
character of Tartuffe. This, at least, was like Dante. There 
is not much sweet laughter in such a comedy. But there is 
a power that is dreadful. 

Each succeeding generation of Frenchmen supplies its 
bright and ingenious wits who produce comedy. But as 
there is no second Shakespeare, so there is but one Moliére. 


VIII. 
PASCAL. 
1623-1662. 


Pascau’s fame is distinctly the fame of a man of genius. 
He achieved notable things. But it iswhat he might have 
done, still more than what he did, that fixes his estimation in 
the world of mind. Blaise Pascal is one of the chief intel- 
lectual glories of France. 

Pascal, the boy, hada strong natural bent toward mathe- 
matics, The story is that his father, in order to turn his 


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son’s whole force on the study of languages, put out of the 
lad’s reach all books treating his favorite subject. Thus shut 
up to his own resources the masterful little fellow, about his 
eighth year, drawing charcoal diagrams on the floor, made 
perceptible progress in working out geometry for himself. 
At sixteen he produced a treatise on conic sections that ex- 
cited the wonder and incredulity of Descartes. Later he 
experimented in barometry, and pursued investigations in 
mechanics. Later still he made what seemed to be ap- 
proaches toward Newton’s binomial theorem. 

Vivid religious convictions meantime deeply affected 
Pascal’s mind. His health, never robust, began to give way. 
‘His physicians prescribed mental diversion, and forced him: 
into society. That medicine, taken at first with reluctance, 
_ proved dangerously delightful to Pascal’s vivacious and sus- 
ceptible spirit. His pious sister Jacqueline warned her 
brother that he was going too far. But he was still more 
effectively warned by an accident, in which he almost mirac- 
ulously escaped from death. Withdrawing from the world, 
he adopted a course of ascetic practices, in which he con- 
tinued till he died—in his thirty-ninth year. He wore about 
his waist an iron girdle armed with sharp points; and this 
he would press smartly with his elbow when he detected him- 
self at fault in his spirit. 

Notwithstanding what Pascal did or attempted worthy of 
fame, in science, it was his fortune to become chiefly re- 
nowned by literary achievement. His, in fact, would now be 
a half-forgotten name if he had not written the “ Provincial 
Letters” and the “Thoughts.” 

The “Provincial Letters” is an abbreviated title. The 
title in full originally was, “ Letters written by Louis de 
Montalte to a Provincial, one of his friends, and to the Rever- 
end Fathers, the Jesuits, on the subject of the morality and 
the policy of those Fathers.” 

Of the “Provincial Letters,” several English translations 
have been made. No one of these that we have been able 
to find seems entirely satisfactory. There is an elusive 


Pascal. 93 





quality to Pascal’s style, and in losing this you seem to lose 
something of Pascal’s thought. For with Pascal the thought 
and the style penetrate each other inextricably and almost 
indistinguishably. You cannot print a smile, an inflection 
of the voice, a glance of the eye, a French shrug of the shoul- 
ders. And such modulations of the thought seem every- 
where to lurk in the turns and phrases of Pascal’s inimitable 
French. To translate them is impossible. 

Pascal is beyond question the greatest modern master of 
that indescribably delicate art in expression, which, from its 
illustrious ancient exemplar, has received the name of the 
Socratic irony. With this fine weapon, in great part, it was, 
wielded like a magician’s invisible wand, that Pascal did his 
memorable execution on the Jesuitical system of morals and 
casuistry, in the “ Provincial Letters,” In great part, we say ; 
for the flaming moral earnestness of the man could not abide 
only to play with his adversaries to the end of the famous 
dispute. His lighter cimeter blade he flung aside before he 
had done, and, toward the last, brandished a sword that had 
weight as well as edge and temper. The skill that could 
halve a feather in the air with the sword of Saladin was 
proved to be also strength that could cleave a suit of mail 
with the brand of Richard the Lion-hearted. 

It is generally acknowledged that the French language 
has never in any hands been a more obedient instrument of 
intellectual power than it was in the hands of Pascal. He is 
rated the earliest writer to produce what may be called the 
final French prose. ‘The creator of French style,” Ville- 
main boldly calls him. VPascal’s style remains to this day 
almost perfectly free from adhesions of archaism in diction 
and in construction. Pascal showed, as it were at once, what 
the French language was capable of doing in response to the 
demands of a master. It was the joint achievement of 
genius; of taste, and of skill, working together in an exquisite 
balance and harmony. : 

But let us be entirely frank. The “ Provincial Letters” of 
Pascal are now, to the general reader, not so interesting as’ 


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from their fame one would seem entitled to expect. You 
cannot read them intelligently without considerable previous 
study. You need to have learned, imperfectly, with labor, a 
thousand things that every contemporary reader of Pascal 
perfectly knew as if by simply breathing—the necessary 
knowledge being then, so to speak, abroad in the air. Even 
thus you cannot possibly derive that vivid delight from pe- 
rusing in bulk the “ Provincial Letters ” now, which the succes- 
sive numbers of the series, appearing at brief irregular 
intervals, communicated to the eagerly expecting French 
public, at a time when the topics discussed were topics of a 
present and pressing practical interest. Still, with what- 
ever disadvantage unavoidably attending, we must give our 
readers a taste of the quality of Pascal’s “ Provincial Letters.” 
We select a passage at the commencement of the “Seventh 
Letter.” We use the translation of Mr. Thomas M’Crie. 
This succeeds very well in conveying the sense, though it 
necessarily fails to convey either the vivacity or the elo- 
quence, of the incomparable original. ‘The first occasion of 
the “ Provincial Letters” was a championship proposed to Pas- 
cal to be taken up by him on behalf of his beleaguered and 
endangered friend Arnauld, the Port-Royalist. (Port Royal 
was a Roman Catholic abbey situated some eight miles to 
the south-west of Versailles, and therefore not very remote 
from Paris.) Arnauld was “for substance of doctrine” 
really a Calvinist, though he quite sincerely disclaimed being 
such; and it was for his defense of Calvinism (under its 
ancient form of Augustinianism) that he was threatened, 
through Jesuit enmity, with condemnation for heretical 
opinion. The problem was to enlist the sentiment of general 
society in his favor. ‘The friends in council at Port Royal 
said to Pascal, “ You must do this.” Pascal said, “I will 
try.” Ina few days the first letter of a series destined to 
such fame was submitted for judgment to Port Royal, and 
approved, It was printed—anonymously. The sueéess was 
instantaneous and brilliant. A second letter followed, and a 
third. Soon, from strict. personal defense of Arnauld, the 


Pascal. 95 





writer went on to take up a line of offense and aggression. 
He carried the war into Africa. He attacked the Jesuits as 
teachers of immoral doctrine. 

The plan of these later letters was to have a Paris gentle- 
man write to a friend of his in the country (the “ provincial”), 
detailing interviews held by him with a Jesuit priest of the 
city. The supposed Parisian gentleman in his interviews 
with the supposed Jesuit father affects the air of a very 
simple-hearted seeker after truth. He represents himself as, 
by his innocent-seeming docility, leading his Jesuit teacher 
on to make the most astonishingly frank exposures of the 
secrets of the casuistical system held and taught by his order. 

The “Seventh Letter ” tells the story of how Jesuit confes- 
sors were instructed to manage their penitents in a matter 
made immortally famous by the wit and genius of Pascal, the 
matter of “directing the intention.” There is nothing in the 
* Provincial Letters” better suited than this at the same time 
to interest the general reader, and to display the quality of 
these renowned productions. (We do not scruple to change 
our chosen translation a little at points where it seems to us 
susceptible of some easy improvement.) Remember it is an 
imaginary Parisian gentleman who now writes to a friend of 
his in the country. Our extract introduces first the Jesuit 
father speaking: 


“You know,” he said, ‘‘ that the ruling passion of persons in that rank 
of life [the rank of gentleman] is ‘the point of honor,’ which is perpetu- 
ally driving them into acts of violence apparently quite at variance with 
Christian piety; so that, in fact, they would be almost all of them ex- 
cluded from our confessionals, had not our fathers relaxed a little from 
the strictness of religion, to accommodate themselves to the weakness of 

’ humanity. Anxious to keep on good terms, both with the gospel, by 
doing their duty to God, and with the men of the world, by showing 
charity to their neighbor, they needed all the wisdom they possessed to 

' devise expedients for so nicely adjusting matters as to permit these gentle- 
men to adopt the methods usually resorted to for vindicating their honor 

- without, wounding their consciences, and thus reconcile things apparently 

- 80 opposite to each other as piety and the point of honor.”. .. 

“I should certainly [so replies M. Montalte, with the most exquisite 


96 Olassie French Course in English. 





irony crouched under a cover of admiring simplicity]—I should certainly 
have considered the thing perfectly impracticable, if I had not known, 
from what I have seen of your fathers, that they are capable of doing 
with ease what is impossible to other men. This led me to anticipate 
that they must have discovered some method for meeting the difficulty— 
a method which I admire, even before knowing it, and which I pray you 
to explain to me.” 

“Since that is your view of the matter,” replied the monk, “I cannot 
refuse you. Know, then, that this marvelous principle is our grand 
method of directing the intention—the importance of which, in our moral 
system, is such, that I might almost venture to compare it with the doc- 
trine of probability. You have had some glimpses of it in passing, from 
certain maxims which I mentioned to you. For example, when I was 
showing you how servants might execute certain troublesome jobs with a 
safe conscience, did you not remark that it was simply by diverting their 
intention from the evil to which they were accessory, to the profit which 
they might reap from the transaction? Now, that is what we call 
directing the intention. You saw, too, that, were it not for a similar di- 
vergence of the mind, those who give money for benefices might be 
downright simoniacs. But I will now show you this grand method in all 
its glory, as it applies to the subject of homicide—a crime which it justi- 
fies in a thousand instances—in order that, from this startling result, you 

may form an idea of all that it is calculated to effect. 

“T foresee already,” said I, “‘ that, according to this mode, every thing 
will be permitted: it will stick at nothing.” 

“You always fly from the one extreme to the other,” renled the monk; 
“prithee, avoid that habit. For just to show you that we are far foci 
permitting every thing, let me tell you that we never suffer such a thing 
as a formal intention to sin, with the sole-design of sinning; and, if any 
person whatever should persist in having no other end but evil in the evil 
that he does, we break with him at once; such conduct is diabolical. 
This holds true, without exception of age, sex, or rank. But when the 
person is not of such a wretched disposition as this, we try to put in 
practice our method of directing the intention, which consists in his pro- 
posing to himself, as the end of his actions, some allowable object. Not 
that we do not endeavor, as far as we can, to dissuade men from doing 
things forbidden; but, when we cannot prevent the action, we at least 
purify the motive, and thus correct the viciousness of the means by the 
goodness of the end. Such is the way in which our fathers have con- 
trived to permit those acts of violence to which men usually resort in 
vindication of their honor. They have no more to do than to turn off 
their intention from the desire of vengeance, which is criminal, and direct 
it to a desire to defend their honor, which, according to us, is quite war- 
rantable. And in this way our doctors discharge all their duty toward 


Paseal. 97 





God and toward man. By permitting the action, they gratify the world; 
and by purifying the intention, they give. satisfaction to the gospel, 
This is a secret, sir, which was entirely unknown to the ancients; the 
world is indebted for the discovery entirely to our doctors. You under- 
stand it now, I hope?” 

_ “ Perfectly,” was my reply. ‘To men you grant the outward material 
effect of the action, and to God you give the inward and spiritual move- 
ment of the intention; and, by this equitable partition, you form an alli- 
ance between the laws of God and the laws of men. But, my dear sir, 
to be frank with you, I can hardly trust your premises, and I suspect that 
your authors will tell another tale.” 

“You do me injustice,” rejoined the monk; “I advance nothing but 
what I am ready to prove, and that by such a rich array of passages, that 
altogether their number, their authority, and their reasonings, will fill you 
with admiration. To show you, for example, the alliance which our 
fathers have formed between the maxims of the gospel and those of the 
world, by thus regulating the intention, let me refer you to Reginald. 
(In Prazxi., liv. xxi., num, 62, p. 260.) [These, and all that follow, are 
verifiable citations from real and undisputed Jesuit authorities, not to this 
day repudiated by that order.] ‘Private persons are forbidden to avenge 
themselves ; for St. Paul says to the Romans (ch. 12th), ‘‘ Recompense to 
no man evil for evil;” and Ecclesiasticus says (ch. 28th), “‘ He that taketh 
vengeance shall draw on himself the vengeance of God, and his sins will 
not be forgotten.” Besides all that is said in the gospel about forgiving 
offenses, as in the 6th and 18th chapters of St. Matthew.’ ” 

“Well, father, if after that, he [Reginald] says any thing contrary to 
the Scripture, it will, at least, not be from lack of scriptural knowledge. 
Pray, how does he conclude? ” 

“You shall hear,” he said. ‘From all this it appears that a military 
man may demand satisfaction on the spot from the person who has in- 
jured him—not, indeed, with the intention of rendering evil for evil, but 
with that of preserving his honor—non ut malum pro malo reddat, sed ut 
conservat honorem. See you how carefully, because the Scripture con- 
demns it, they guard against the intention of rendering evil for evil? 
This is what they will tolerate on no account. Thus Lessius observes 
(De Just., liv. ii., c. 9, d. 12, n. 79), that, ‘If a man has received a blow 

on the face, he must on no account have an intention to avenge himself; 
but he may lawfully have an intention to avert infamy, and may, with 
that view, repel the insult immediately, even at the point of the sword— 
etiam cum gladio.’ So far are we from permitting any one to cherish the 
design of taking vengeance on his enemies, that our fathers will not allow 
any even to wish their death—by a movement of hatred. ‘If your enemy 
is disposed to injure you,’ says Escobar, ‘you have no right to wish his 
death, by a movement of hatred; though you may, with a view to save 


98 Classie French Course in English. 





yourself from harm,’ So legitimate, indeed, is this wish, with such an 
intention, that our great Hurtado de Mendoza says that ‘we may pray 
God to visit with speedy death those who are bent on persecuting us, if 
there is no other way of escaping from it.’” (In his book, De Spe, vol. 
ii,, d. 15, sec. 4, 48.) 

“‘May it please your reverence,” said I, ‘‘the Church has forgotten to 
insert a petition to that effect among’ her prayers.” 

“They have not put every thing into the prayers that one may lawfully 
ask of God,” answered the mouk. ‘“ Besides, in the present case, the 
thing was impossible, for this same opinion is of more recent standing © 
than the Breyiary. You are not a good chronologist, friend. But, not 
to wander from the point, let me request your attention to the following 
passage, cited by Diana from Gaspar Hurtado (De Sub. Pecc., diff. 9; 
Diana, p.5; tr. 14, r. 99), one of Escobar’s four-and-twenty fathers: 
‘An incumbent may, without any mortal sin, desire the decease of a life- 
renter on his benefice, and a son that of his father, and rejoice when it 
happens; provided always it is for the sake of the profit that is to accrue 
from the event, and not from personal aversion.’ ” 

“Good,” cried I. “That is certainly a very happy hit, and I can 
easily see that the doctrine admits of a wide application, But yet there 
are certain cases, the solution of which, though of great importance for 
gentlemen, might present still greater difficulties.” 

** Propose such, if you please, that we may see,” said the monk. 

“ Show me, with all your directing of the intention,” returned I, “ that 
it is allowable to fight a duel.” 

“Our great Hurtado de Mendoza,” said the father, “ will satisfy you on 
that point in a twinkling. ‘Ifa gentleman,’ says he, in a passage cited 
by Diana, ‘who is chalienged to fight a duel, is well known to have no 
religion, and if the vices to which he is openly and unscrupulously ad- 
dicted are such as would lead people to conclude, in the event of his 
refusing to fight, that he is actuated, not by the fear of God, but by 
cowardice, and induce them to say of him that he was a hen, and not a 
man—gallina, et non vir; in that case he may, to save his honor, appear 
at the appointed spot—not, indeed, with the express intention of fighting 
a duel, but merely with that of defending himself, should the person who 
challenged him come there unjustly to attack him. His action in this 
case, viewed by itself, will be perfectly indifferent; for what moral evil 
is there in one’s stepping into a field, taking a stroll in expectation of 
meeting a person, and defending one’s self in the event of being at- 
tacked? And thus the gentleman is guilty of no sin whatever; for, in 
fact, it cannot be called accepting a challenge at all, his intention being 
directed to other circumstances, and the acceptance of a challenge con- 
sisting in an express intention to fight, which we are supposing the 
gentleman never had,’” 


Pascal. 99 





The humorous irony of Pascal, in the “Provincial Let- 
ters,” plays like the diffusive sheen of an aurora borealis 
over the whole surface of the composition. It does not often 
deliver itself startlingly in sudden discharges as of lightning. 
You need to school your sense somewhat, not to miss a fine 
effect now and then. Consider the broadness and coarse- 
ness in pleasantry, that, before Pascal, had been common, 
almost universal, in controversy, and you will better under- 
stand what a creative touch it was of genius, of feeling, and 
of taste, that brought into literature the far more than Attic, 
the ineffable Christian, purity of that wit and humor in the 
“Provincial Letters” which will make ’these writings live 
as long as men anywhere continue to read the produc- 
tions of past ages. Erasmus, perhaps, came the nearest of 
all modern predecessors to anticipating the purified pleas- 
antry of Pascal. 

It will be interesting and instructive to see Pascal’s own 
statement of his reasons for adopting the bantering style 
which he did in the “ Provincial Letters,” as well as of the 
sense of responsibility to be faithful and fair, under which he 
wrote. Pascal says : 


Ihave been asked why I employed a pleasant, jocose, and diverting 
style. I reply ... Ithought it a duty to write so as to be compre- 
hended by women and men of the world, that they might know the dan- 
ger of their maxims and propositions which were then universally prop- 
agated. ... I have been asked, lastly, if I myself read all the books, 
which I quoted. Ianswer, No. If I had done so, I must have passed 
a great part of my life in reading very bad books; but I read Escobar 
twice through, and I employed some of my friends in reading the others. 
But I did not make use of a single passage without having myself read 
it in the book from which it is cited, without having examined the sub- 
ject of which it treats, and without having read what went before and 
followed, so that I might run no risk of quoting an objection as an answer 
which would have been blameworthy and unfair. 


Of the wit of the “Provincial Letters,” their wit and their 
controversial effectiveness, the specimens given will have 
afforded readers some approximate idea. We must deny 


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ourselves the gratification of presenting a brief passage, 
which we had selected and translated for the purpose, to ex- 
emplify from the same source Pascal’s serious eloquence. 
It was Voltaire who said of these productions: “ Moliére’s 
best comedies do not excel them in wit, nor the compositions 
of Bossuet in sublimity.” Something of Bossuet’s sublimity, 
or of a sublimity perhaps finer than Bossuet’s, our readers 
will discover in citations to follow from the “ Thoughts.” 
Pascal’s “Thoughts,” the printed book, has a remarkable 
history. It was a posthumous publication. The author 
died, leaving behind him a considerable number of detached 
fragments of composition, first jottings of thought on a sub- 
ject that had long occupied his mind, These precious man- 
uscripts were almost undecipherable. The writer had used 
for his purpose any chance scrap of paper—old wrapping, 
for example, or margin of letter—thbat, at the critical mo- 
ment of happy conception, was nearest his hand. Senten- 
ces, words even, were often left unfinished. There was no 
coherence, no sequence, no arrangement. It was, however, 
among his friends perfectly well understood that Pascal for 
years had meditated a work on religion designed to demon- 
strate the truth of Christianity. For this he had been think- 
ing arduously. Fortunately he had even, in a memorable 
conversation, sketched his project at some length to his 
Port Royal friends. With so much, ‘scarcely more, in the 
way of clew, to guide their editorial work, these friends pre- 
pared and issued a volume of Pascal’s “Thoughts.” With 
the most loyal intentions, the Port-Royalists unwisely edited 
too much. They pieced out incompletenesses, they pro- 
vided clauses or sentences of connection, they toned down 
expressions deemed too bold, they improved Pascal’s style ! 
After having suffered such things from his friends, the pos- 
thumous Pascal, later, fell into the hands of an enemy. The 
infidel Condorcet published an edition of the “Thoughts.” 
Whereas the Port-Royalists had suppressed to placate the 
Jesuits, Condorcet suppressed to please the “ philosophers.” 
Between those on the one side and these on the other, Pas- 


Pascal. 101 
e— 
cal’s “Thoughts ” had experienced what might well have 
killed any production of the human mind that could die. 
It was not till near the middle of the present’ century that 
Cousin called the attention of the world to the fact that we 
had not yet, but that we still might have, a true edition of 
Pascal’s “Thoughts.” M. Faugére took the hint, and, con- 
sulting the original manuscripts, preserved in the national 
library at Paris, produced, with infinite editorial labor, almost 
two hundred years after the thinker’s death, the first satisfac- 
tory edition of Pascal’s “Thoughts.” Since Faugére, M. Havet 
has also published an edition of Pascal’s works entire, by him 
now first adequately annotated and explained. The arrange- 
ment of the “ Thoughts ” varies in order, according to the va- 
rying judgment of editors. We use, for our extracts, a current 
translation, which we modify at our discretion by comparison 
of the original text as given in M. Havet’s elaborate work. 

Our first extract is a passage in which the writer supposes 
a skeptic of the more shallow, trifling sort, to speak. This 
skeptic represents his own state of mind in the following 
strain as of soliloquy : 





“TI do not know who put me into the world, nor what tlie world is, nor 
what Iam myself. I am in a frightful ignorance of all things. I do not 
know what my body is, what my senses are, what my soul is, and that 
very part of me which thinks what I am saying, which reflects upon 
every thing and upon itself, and is no better acquainted with itself than 
with any thing else. I-see these appalling spaces of the universe which 
inclose me, and I find myself tethered in one corner of this immense ex- 
pansion without knowing why I am stationed in this place rather than in 
another, or why this moment of time which is given me to live is assigned 
me at this point rather than at another of the whole eternity that has 
preceded me, and of that which is to follow me. 

“T see nothing but infinities on every side, which inclose me like an 
atom, and like a shadow which endures but for an instant, and returns 
no more. 

“ All that I know is, that I am soon todie; but what I am most igno- 
rant of is, that very death which I am unable to avoid. . 

“As I know not whence I came, so I know not whither I go; and I 
know only, that in leaving this world I fall forever either into nothingness 
or into the hands of an angry God, without knowing which of these two 


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—_& 


conditions is to be eternally my lot. Such is my state—full of misery, of 
weakness, and of uncertainty. 

“ And from all this I conclude that I ought to pass all the days of my 
life without a thought of trying to learn what is to befall me hereafter. 
Perhaps in my doubts I might find some enlightenment; but I am un- 
willing to take the trouble, or go a single step in search of it; and, 
treating with contempt those who perplex themselves with such solici- 
tude, my purpose is to go forward without forethought and without fear 
to try the great event, and passively to approach death in uncertainty of 
the eternity of my future condition.” 

Who would desire to have for a friend a man who discourses in this 
manner? Who would select such a one for the confidant of his affairs? 
Who would have recourse to such a one in his afflictions? And, in pk 
for what use of life could such a man be destined ? 















The central thought on which the projected apologeete of 
Pascal was to revolve as on a pivot is, the contrasted great- 
ness and wretchedness of man—with Divine Revelation, in 
its doctrine of a fall on man’s part from original nobleness, 
supplying the needed link, and the only link conceivable, of 
explanation, to unite the one with the other, the human great- 
ness with the human wretchedness. This contrast of dignity 
and disgrace should constantly be in the mind of the reader 
of the “ Thoughts” of Pascal. It will often be found to throw 
a very necessary light upon the meaning of the a 
fragments that make up the series. ts 

We now present a brief fragment asserting, with viv ' 
metaphor, at the same time the fragility of man’s frame 
and the majesty of man’s nature. This is a very famous 
“Thought ”: 


Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. 
It is not necessary that the entire universe arm itself to crush him. An 
exhalation, a drop of water, suffices to kill him. But were the universe 
to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which kills him, 
because he knows that lie is dying, and knows the advantage that the 
universe has over liim. The universe knows nothing of it. 

Our whole dignity gonsists, then, in thought. 


One is reminded of the memorable saying of a celebrated 
philosopher : “In the universe there is nothing great but 
man; in man there is nothing great but mind.” 


Pascal. 103 





—— 


What a sudden, almost ludicrous, reduction in scale, the 
greatness of Cesar, as conqueror, is made to suffer when 
looked at in the way in which Pascal asks you to look at it in 
the following “Thought”! (Remember that Czsar, when he 
began fighting for universal empire, was fifty-one years 
of age: ) 

Czesar was too old, it seems to me, to amuse himself with conquering 
the world. This amusement was well enough for Augustus or Alexander ; 


they were young people, whom it is difficult to stop; but Czesar ought to 
have been more mature. 


That is as if you should reverse the tube of your telescope, 
with the result of seeing the object observed made smaller 
instead of larger. 

The following sentence might be a “ Maxim” of La Roche- 
eee foucauld. Pascal was, no doubt, a debtor to him as well as 
-» to Montaigne: 






I lay it down as a fact, that, ifall men knew what others say of them 
_ there would not be four friends in the world. 


- Here i is one of the most current of Pascal's sayings: 


; Boe i - Rivers are highways that move on and heart us, whither we wish to go. 


4S e x The following “ Thought” condenses the substance of the 
hook proposed-into three short sentences: 


< 
¥ 


The knowledge of God without that of our misery produces pride, 
The knowledge of our misery without that of God gives despair. The 
knowledge of Jesus Christ is intermediate, because therein we find God 


and our misery. 


The prevalent seeming severity and intellectual coldness of 
Pascal’s “‘ Thoughts” yield to a touch from the heart, and be- 
come pathetic, in such utterances as the following, supposed 
to be addressed by the Saviour to the penitent seeking to be 
saved: 


Console thyself; thou wouldst not seek me if thou hadst not found me. 


I thought on thee in my agony; such drops of blood I shed for thee, 


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It is austerity again, but not unjust austerity, that speaks. 
as follows: 


Religion is a thing so great that those who would not take the pains to 
seek it if it is obscure, should be deprived of it. What do they complain 
of, then, if it is such that they could find it by seeking it? 


But we must take our leave of Pascal. His was a suffering 
as well as an aspiring spirit. He suffered because he aspired. 
But, at least, he did not suffer long. He aspired himself 
quickly away. ‘Toward the last he wrought at a problem in 
his first favorite study, that of mathematics, and left behind 
him, as a memorial of his later life, a remarkable result of in- 
vestigation on the curve called the cycloid. During his final 
illness he pierced himself through with many sorrows—un- 
necessary sorrows, sorrows, too, that bore a double edge, 
hurting not only him, but also his kindred—in practicing, 
from mistaken religious motives, a hard repression upon his 
natural instinct to love, and to welcome love. He thought 
that God should be all, the creature nothing. The thought 
was half true, but it was half false. God should, indeed, be 
all. But, in God, the creature also should be something. 

In French history—we may say, in the history of the 
world—if there are few brighter, there also are few purer, 
fames than the fame of Pascal. 


Madame de Sévigné. : 105 





Tx 
MADAME DE SEVIGNE. 


1626-1696, 


Or Madame de Sévigné, if it were permitted here to make 
a pun and a paradox, one might justly and descriptively say 
that she was not a woman of letters, but only a woman of— 
letters. For Madame de Sévigné’s addiction to literature 
was not at all that of an author by profession. She simply 
wrote admirable private letters in great profusion, and be- 
came famous thereby. 

Madame de Sévigné’s fame is partly her merit, but it is also 
partly her good fortune. She was rightly placed to be what 
she was. This will appear from a sketch of her life, and still 
more from specimens to be exhibited of her own epistolary 
writing. 

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal was her maiden name. She was 
born a baroness. She was married, young, a marchioness. 
First early left an orphan, she was afterward early left a 
widow—not too early, however, to have become the mother 
of two children, a son and a daughter. The daughter grew 
to be the life-long idol of the widowed mother’s heart. The 
letters she wrote to this daughter, married and living remote 
from her, compose the greater part of that voluminous epis- 
tolary production by which Madame de Sévigné became, 
without her ever aiming at such a result, or probably ever 
thinking of it, one of the classics of the French language. 

Madame de Sévigné was wealthy as orphan heiress, and 
she should have been wealthy as widow. But her husband was 
profligate, and he wasted her substance. She turned out to 
be a thoroughly capable woman of affairs who managed her 
property well. During her long and stainless widowhood— 


her husband fell in a shameful duel when she was but twenty- 
5 


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five years old, and she lived to be seventy—she divided 
her time between her estate, “The Rocks,” in Brittany, and 
her residence in Paris. This period was all embraced within 
the protracted reign of Louis XIV., perhaps upon the whole 
the most memorable age in the history of France. 
Beautiful, and, if not brilliantly beautiful, at least, brill- 
iantly witty, Madame de Sévigné was virtuous—in that chief 
sense of feminine virtue—amid an almost universal empire of 
profligacy around her. Her social advantages were unsur- 
passed, and her social success was equal to her advantages. 
She had the woman courtier’s supreme triumph in being once 
led out to dance by the king—her own junior by a dozen 
years—no vulgar king, remember, but the “great” Louis 
XIV. Her cynical cousin, himself a writer of power, who 
had been repulsed in dishonorable proffers of love by the 
young marchioness during the lifetime of her husband—we 
mean Count Bussy—says, in a scurrilous work of his, that 
Madame de Sévigné remarked, on returning to her seat after 
her dancing-bout with the king, that Louis possessed great 
qualities, and would certainly obscure the luster of all his 
predecessors. “I could not help laughing in her face,” the 
ungallant cousin declared, “seeing what had produced this 
panegyric.” Probably, indeed, the young woman was 
pleased. But, whatever may have been her faults or her 
follies, nothing can rob Madame de Sévigné of the glory that 
is hers, in having been strong enough in womanly and 
motherly honor to preserve, against many dazzling tempta- 
tions, amid general bad example, and even under malignant 
aspersions, a chaste and spotless name. When it is added 
that, besides access to the royal court itself, this gifted 
woman enjoyed the familiar acquaintance of La Rochefou- 
cauld—with other high-bred wits, less famous, not a few— 
enough will have been said to show that her position was 
such as to give her talent its best possible chance. The 
French history of the times of Louis XIV. is hinted in 
glimpses the most vivid and the most suggestive, throughout 
the whole series of the letters. . 


Madame de Sévigné. 107 





We owe it to our readers (and to Madame de Sévigné no 
less) first of all to let them see a specimen of the affection- 
ate adulation that this French woman of rank and of fashion, 
literally in almost every letter of hers, effuses on her daugh- 
ter—a daughter who, by the way, seems very languidly to 
have responded to such demonstrations : 


_TuHe Rooks, Sunday, June 28, 1671. 
You have amply made up to me my late losses; I have received two 
letters from you which have filled me with transports of joy. The 
pleasure I take in reading them is beyond all imagination. If I have in 
any way contributed to the improvement of your style, I did it in the 
thought that I was laboring for the pleasure of others, not for my own. 
But Providence, who has seen fit to separate us so often, and to place us 
at such immense distances from each other, has repaid me a little for the 
ptivation in the charms of your correspondence, and still more in the 
satisfaction you express in your situation, and the beauty of your castle; 
" you represent it to me with an air of grandeur and magnificence that en- 
chants me. I once saw a similar account of it by the first Madame de 
Grignan; but I little thought at that time that all these beauties were 
to be one day at yourcommand. I am very much obliged to you for 
having given me so particular an account of it. If I could be tired in read- 
ing your letters, it would not only betray a very bad taste in me, but would 
likewise show that I could have very little love or friendship for you. Di- 
vest yourself of the dislike you have taken to circumstantial details. I 
have often told you, and you ought yourself to feel the truth of this re- 
mark, that they are as dear to us from those we love as they are tedious 
and disagreeable from others. If they are displeasing to us, it is 
only from the indifference we feel for those who write them. Admitting 
this observation to be true, I leave you to judge what pleasure yours 
afford me. It is a fine thing truly to play the great lady, as you do at 
present. 


Conceive the foregoing multiplied by the whole number of 
the separate letters composing the correspondence, and you 
will have no exaggerated idea of the display that Madame de 
Sévigné makes of her regard for her daughter. This re- 
gard was a passion, morbid, no doubt, by excess, and, even 
at that, extravagantly demonstrated; but it was funda- 
mentally sincere. Madame de Sévigné idealized her absent 
daughter, and literally “loved but only her.” We need not 


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wholly admire such maternal affection. But we should not 
criticise it too severely. 

We choose next a marvelously vivid “instantaneous view ” 
in words, of a court afternoon and evening at Versailles. This 
letter, too is addressed to the daughter—Madame de Grignan, 
by her married name. It bears date, “ Paris, Wednesday, 
29th July.” The year is 1676, and the writer is just fifty : 


I was at Versailles last Saturday with the Villarses. . . . At three the 
king, the queen, Monsieur [eldest brother to the king], Madame [that 
brotlier’s wife], Mademoiselle [that brother’s eldest unmarried daughter], 
and every thing else which is royal, together with Madame de Montespan 
[the celebrated mistress of the king] and train, and all the courtiers, and all 
the ladies—all, in short, which constitutes the court of France, is assembled 
in the beautiful apartment of the king’s, which you remember. All is 
furnished divinely, allis magnificent. Such a thing as heat is unknown; 
you pass from one place to another without the slightest pressure. A 

‘game at reversis [the description is of a gambling scene, in which 
Dangeau figures as a cool and skiliful gamester] gives the company a form 
and a settlement. The king and Madame de Montespan keep a bank 
together; different tables are occupied by Monsieur, the queen, and 
Madame de Soubise, Dangeau and party, Langlée and party. Every- 
where you see heaps of louis d’ors; they have no other counters. I saw 
Dangeau play, and thought what fools we all were beside him. He 
dreams of nothing but what concerns the game; he wins where others 
lose: he neglects nothing, profits by every thing, never has his attention 
diverted; in short his science bids defiance to chance. Two hundred thou- 
sand francs in ten days, a hundred thousand crowns in a month, these are 
the pretty memorandums he puts down in his pocket-book. He was kind 
enough to say that I was partners with him, so that I got an excellent 
seat. I made my obeisance to the king, as you told mc; and he re- 
turned it as if I had been young and handsome. ... The duke said a 
thousand kind things without minding a word he uttered. Marshal de 
Lorgnes attacked me in the name of the Chevalier de Grignan; in short, 
tutti quanti [the whole company]. You know what it is to get a word 
from every body you meet. Madame de Montespan talked to me of 
Bourbon, and asked me how I liked Vichi, and whether the place did me 
good, She said that Bourbon, instead of curing a pain in one of her 
knees, injured both. . . . Her size is reduced by a good half, and yet her 
complexion, her eyes, and her lips, are as fine as ever. She was dressed 
all in French point, her hair in a thousand ringlets, the two side ones 
hanging low on her cheeks, black ribbons on her head, pearls (the same 
that belonged to Madame de l’H6pital), the loveliest diamond earrings, 


Madame de Sévigné. . 109 





three or four bodkins—nothing else on the head; in short a triumphant 
beauty, worthy the admiration of all the foreign embassadors. She was 
accused of preventing the whole French nation from seeing the king; 
she has restored him, you see, to their eyes; and you cannot conceive 
the joy it has given everybody, and the splendor it has thrown upon 
the court. This charming confusion, without confusion, of all which is 
the most select, continues from three till six. If couriers arrive, the 
king retires a moment to read the despatches and returns, There is 
always some music going on, towhich he listens, and which has an ex- 
cellent effect. He talks with such of the ladies as are accustomed to 
enjoy that honor. . . At six the carriages are at the door. The king is 
in one of them with Madame de Montespan, Monsieur and Madame de 
Thianges, and honest d’Heudicourt in a fool’s paradise on the stool. 
You know how these open carriages are made; they do not sit face to 
face, but all looking the same way. The queen occupies another with 
the princess; and the rest come flocking after, as it may happen. There 

‘are then gondolas on the canal, and music; and at ten they come back, 
and then there is a play; and twelve strikes, and they go to supper; 
and thus rolls round the Saturday. If I were to tell you how often you 
were asked after, how many questions were put to me without waiting 
for answers, how often I neglected to answer, how little they cared, and 
how much less I did, you would see the iniqua corte [wicked court] 
before you in all its perfection. However, it never was so pleasant 
before, and everybody wishes it may last. 


There is your picture. Picture, pure and simple, it is— 
comment none, least of all, moralizing comment. The wish 
issighed by “everybody,” that such pleasant things may 
“last.” Well, they did last the writer’s time. But meanwhile 
the French revolution was a-preparing. A hundred years 
later it will come, with its terrible reprisals. 

We have gone away from the usual translations to find 
the foregoing extract in an article published forty years ago 
and more, in the “ Edinburgh Review.” Again we draw from 
the same source—this time, the description of a visit paid by 
a company of grand folks, of whom the writer of the letter 
was one, to an iron-foundery : 


Fripay, lst Oct, (1677). 
Yesterday evening at Cone we descended into a veritable hell, the 
true forges of Vulcan. Eight or ten Cyclops were at work, forging, not 
arms for Aneas, but anchors for ships. You never saw strokes re- 


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doubled so justly nor with so admirable a cadence. We stood in the 
midst of four furnaces; and the demons came passing about us, all 
melting in sweat, with pale faces, wild-staring eyes, savage mustaclies, 
and hair long and black—a sight enough to frighten less well-bred folks 
than ourselves. As for me, I could not comprehend the possibility of 
refusing any thing which these gentlemen, in their hell, might have 
chosen to exact. We got out at last, by the help of a shower of silver, 
with which we took care to refresh their souls, and facilitate our exit. 


Once more: Paris, 29th November (1679). 


I have been to the wedding of Madame de Louvois. How shail I de- 
scribe it? Magnificence, illuminations, all France, dresses all gold and bro- 
cade, jewels, braziers full of fire, and stands full of flowers, confusions of car- 
riages, cries out of doors, lighted torches, pushings back, people run 
over; in short, a whirlwind, a distraction; questions without answers, 
compliments without knowing what is said, civilities without knowing 
who is spoken to, feet entangled in trains. From the midst of all this 
issue inquiries after your health, which not being answered as quick as 
lightning, the inquirers pass on, contented to remain in the state of ig- 
norance and indifference in which they [the inquiries] were made. O 
vanity of vanities! Pretty little De Mouchy has had the small-pox. 0O 
vanity, et cetera! 


Yet again. The gay writer has been sobered, perhaps 
hurt, by a friend’s frankly writing to her, “ You are old.” 
To her daughter: 


So you were struck with the expression of Madame de la Fayette, blend- 
ed with so much friendship. "Iwas a truth, I own, which I ought to 
have borne in mind; and yet I must confess it astonished me, for I do 
not yet perceive in myself any such decay. Nevertheless, I cannot help 
making many reflections and calculations, and I find the conditions of 
life hard enough. I1 seems to me that I have been dragged, against my 
will, to the fatal period when old age must be endured; I see it; I 
have come to it; and I would fain, if I could help it, not go any 
farther; not advance a step more in the road of infirmities, of pains, 
of losses of memory, of disfigurements ready to do me outrage; and I hear 
a voice which says, ‘‘ You must go on in spite of yourself; or, if you 
will not go on, you must die; ” and this is another extremity from which 
nature revolts. Such is the lot, however, of all who advance beyond 
middle life. What is their resource? To think of the will of God and 
of universal law, and so restore reason to its place, and be patient. Be 
you, then, patient accordingly, my dear child, and let not your affection 
soften into such tears as reason must condemn. 


Madame de Sévigné. 111 





She dates a letter, and recalls that the day was the anni- 
versary of an event in her life: 


Paris, Friday, Feb. 5, 1672. 
This day thousand years I was married. 


Here is a passage with power in it. The great war minis- 
ter of Louis has died. Madame de Sévigné was now sixty- 
five years old. The letter is to her cousin Coulanges: 


I am so astonished at the news of the sudden death of M.de Louvois, 
that I am at a loss how to speak of it. Dead, however, he is, this great 
minister, this potent being, who occupied so great a place; whose per- 
sonality [le moi], as M. Nicole says, had so wide a sway ; who was the 
center of so many orbs. What affairs had he not to manage! what de- 
signs, what projects! what secrets! what interests to unravel, what wars 
to undertake, what intrigues, what noble games at chess to play and to 
direct! Ah! my God, grant me a little time; I want to give check to the 
Duke of Savoy—checkmate to the Prince of Orange. No, no, you shall 
not haye a moment, not a single moment. Are events like these to be 
talked of ? Not they. We must reflect upon them in our closets. 


A glimpse of Bourdaloue: 


Ah, that Bourdaloue! his sermon on the Passion was, they say, the 
most perfect thing of the kind that can be imagined; it was the same he 
preached last year, but revised and altered with the assistance of some 
of his friends, that it might be wholly inimitable. How can one love God 
if one never hears him properly spoken of ? You must really possess a 
greater portion of grace than others. 


A distinguished caterer or steward, a gentleman described 
as possessing talent enough to have governed a province, 
commits suicide on a professional point of honor: 


Paris, Sunday, April 26, 1671. 

I have just learned from Moreuil of what passed at Chantilly with 
regard to poor Vatel. I wrote to you last Friday that he had stabbed 
himself—these are the particulars of the affair: The king arrived there 
on Thursday night; the walk, and the collation, which was served in a 
place set apart for the purpose, and strewed with jonquils, were just as 
they should be. Supper was served; but there was no roast meat at one 
or two of the tables, on account of Vatel’s having been obliged to pro- 
vide several dinners more than were expected. This affected his spirits ; 


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and he was heard to say several times, “I have lost my honor! I can- 
not bear this disgrace!” ‘My head is quite bewildered,” said he to 
Gourville. ‘I have not had awiuk of sleep these twelve nights ; I wish 
you would assist me in giving orders.” Gourville did all he could to com- 
fort and assist him, but the failure of the roast meat (which, however, did 
not happen at the king’s table, but at some of the other twenty-five) was 
always uppermost with him. Gourville mentioned it to the prince [Condé, 
the great Condé, the king’s host], who went directly to Vatel’s apartment 
and said to him, “Every thing is extremely well conducted, Vatel; 
nothing could be more admirable than his majesty’s supper.” “ Your high- 
ness’s goodness,” replied he, “overwhelms me; I am sensible that there 
was a’ deficiency of roast meat at two tables.” ‘“ Not at all,” said the 
prince; “ do not perplex yourself, and all will go well.” Midnight came; 
the fireworks did not succeed; they were covered with a thick cloud; 
they cost sixteen thousand francs. At four o’clock in the morning Vatel 
went round and found every body asleep. He met one of the under- 
purveyors, who was just come in with only two loads of fish, ‘“ What!” 
said he, “is this all?” ‘ Yes, sir,” said the man, not knowing that Vatel 
had despatched other people to all the seaports around. Vatel waited for 
some time; the other purveyors did not arrive ; his head grew distracted ; 
he thought there was no more fish to be had. He flew to Gourville: 
“Sir,” said he, “I cannot outlive this disgrace.” Gourville laughed at 
him. Vatel, however, went to his apartment, and setting the hilt of his 
sword against the door, after two ineffectual attempts, succeeded, in the 
third, in forcing his sword through his heart. At that instant the cour- 
iers arrived with the fish; Vatel was inquired after to distribute it. They 
ran to his apartment, knocked at the door, but received no answer; upon 
which they broke it open, and found him weltering in his blood. A - 
messenger was immediately dispatched to acquaint the prince with what 
had happened, who was like a man in despair. The duke wept, jor his 
Burgundy journey depended upon Vatel. 


The italics here are our own. We felt that we must use 
them. : 

Is it not all pathetic? But how exquisitely characteristic 
of the nation and of the times! “Poor Vatel,” is the extent 
to which Madame de Sévigné allows herself to go in sympa- 
thy. Her heart never bleeds very freely—for anybody ex- 
cept her daughter. Madame de Sévigné’s heart, indeed, we 
grieve to fear, was somewhat hard. 

In another letter, after a long strain as worldly as any one 
could wish to see, this lively woman thus touches, with a 


Madame de Sévigné. 113 





sincerity as unquestionable as the levity is, on the point of 
personal religion: 


But, my dear child, the greatest inclination I have at present is to be 
a little religious. I plague La Mousse about it every day. I belong 
neither to God nor to the devil. I am quite weary of such a situation; 
though, between you and me, I look upon it as the most natural one in 
the world. I am not the devil’s, because I fear God, and have at the bot- 
tom a principle of religion; then, on the other hand, I am not properly 
God’s, because his law appears hard and irksome to me, and I cannot 
bring myself to acts of self-denial; so that altogether I am one of those 
called lukewarm Christians, the great number of whom does not in the 
least surprise me, for I perfectly understand their sentiments, and the 
reasons that influence them. However, we are told that this is a state 
highly displeasing to God; if so, we must get out of it. Alas! this is the 
difficulty. Was ever any thing so mad as I am, to be thus eternally 
pestering you with my rhapsodies ? 


Madame de Sévigné involuntarily becomes a maxim- 
maker: 

The other day I made a maxim off-hand without once thinking of it; 
and I liked it so well that I fancied I had taken it out of M. de la Roche- 
foucauld’s. Pray tell me whether it is so or not, for in that case my 
memory is more to be praised than my judgment. I said, with all the 
ease in the world, that “ ingratitude begets reproach, as acknowledgment 
begets new favors.” Pray, where did this come from? Have I read it? 
Did I dream it? Is it my own idea? Nothing can be truer than the 
thing itself, nor than that Iam totally ignorant how I came by it. I found 
it properly arranged in my brain, and at the end of my tongue. 


The partial mother lets her daughter know whom the 
maxim was meant for. She says, “It is intended for your 
brother.” This young fellow had, we suspect, been first 
earning his mother’s “reproaches” for spendthrift habits, 
and then getting more money from her by “acknowledg- 
ment.” 

She hears that son of hers read “some chapters out of 
Rabelais,” “‘ which were enough,” she declares, “to make us 
die with laughing.” “I pesca affect,” she says, “a prud- 
ery which is not natural to me.” No, indeed, a prude this 
woman was not. She had the strong xsthetic stomach of her 


114 Classic French Course in English. 





time. It is queer to have Rabelais rubbing cheek and jowl 
with Nicole (“ We are going to begin a moral treatise of 
Nicole’s ”), a severe Port-Royalist, in one and the same let- 
ter. But this is French; above all, it is Madame de Sé- 
vigné. By the way, she and her friends, first and last, 
“die” a thousand jolly deaths “ with laughing.” 

A contemporary allusion to “'Tartuffe,” with more French 
manners implied: 


The other day La Biglesse played Tartuffe to the life. Being at table, 
she happened to tell a fib about some trifle or other, which I noticed, and 
told her of it; she cast her eyes to the ground, and with a very demure 
air, ‘ Yes, indeed, madam,” said she, “I am the greatest liar in the 
world; Iam very much obliged to you for telling me of it.” We all burst 
out a-laughing, for it was exactly the tone of Tartuffe—‘ Yes, brother, I - 
am a wretch, a vessel of iniquity.” 


M. de la Rochefoucauld appears often by name in the let- 
ters. Here he appears anonymously by his effect : 


“Warm affections are never tranquil; ” a maxim. 


Not a very sapid bit of gnomic wisdom, certainly. We 
must immediately make up to our readers, on Madame de 
Sévigné’s behalf, for the insipidity of the foregoing “maxim” 
of hers, by giving here two or three far more sententious ex- 
cerpts from the letters, excerpts collected by another : 


There may be so great a weight of obligation that there is no way of 
being delivered from it but by ingratitude. 
Long sicknesses wear out grief, and long hopes wear out joy. 


Shadow is never long taken for substance; you must be, if you would 
appear to be. The world is not unjust long. 


Madame de Sévigné makes a confession which will com- 
fort readers who may have experienced the same difficulty as 
that of which she speaks : 


I send you M. de Rochefoucauld’s “ Maxims,” revised and corrected, 
with additions; it is a present to you from himself. Some of them I 
can make shift to guess the meaning of; but there are others, that, to 
my shame be it spoken, I cannot understand at all. God knows how it 
will be with you, 


Madame de Sévigné. 115 





What was it changed this woman’s mood to serious? She 
could not have been hearing Massillon’s celebrated sermon on 
the “Fewness of the Elect,” for Massillon was yet only a boy 
of nine years; she may have been reading Paseal’s “ Thoughts ” 
—Pascal had been dead ten years, and the “ Thoughts” had 
been published; or she may have been listening to one of 
those sifting, heart-searching discourses of Bourdaloue—the 
date of her letter is March 16, 1672, and during the Lent of 
that year Bourdaloue preached at Versailles—when she wrote 
somberly as follows : 


You ask me if I am as fond of life as ever. I must own to you that I 
experience mortifications, and severe ones too; but I am still unhappy at 
the thoughts of death; I consider it so great a misfortune to see the ter- 
mination of all my pursuits, that I should desire nothing better, if it were — 
practicable, than to begin life again. I find myself engaged in a scene of 
confusion and trouble; I was embarked in life without my own consent, 
and know I must leave it again; this distracts me, for how shall I leave 
it? Inwhatmanner? By what door? At what time? In what dispo- 
sition? Am I to suffer a thousand pains and torments that will make me 
die in a state of despair? Shall I lose mysenses? Am I to die by some 
sudden accident? How shall I stand with God? What shall I have to 
offer to him? Will fear and necessity make my peace with him? Shall 
I have no other sentiment but that of fear? What have I to hope? Am 
I worthy of heaven? Or have I deserved the torments of hell? Dreadful 
alternative! Alarming uncertainty! Can there be greater madness than 
to place our eternal salvation in uncertainty? Yet what is more natural, 
or can be more easily accounted for, than the foolish manner in which I 
have spent my life? Iam frequently buried in thoughts of this nature, 
and then death appears so dreadful to me that I hate life more for leading 
me to it, than I do for all the thorns that are strewed in its way. You 
will ask me, then, if I would wish to live forever? Far from it; but if I 
had been consulted, I would very gladly have died in my nurse’s arms; 
it would have spared me many vexations, and would have insured heaven 
to me at a very easy rate; but let us talk of something else. 


A memorable sarcasm saved for us by Madame de Sévigné, 
at the very close of one of her letters : 


Guilleragues said yesterday that Pelisson ubused the privilege men 
have of being ugly. 


116 Classic French Course in English. 





Readers familiar with Dickens’s “Tale of Two Cities ” will 
recognize in the following narrative a state of society not 
unlike that described by the novelist as immediately preced- 
ing the French Revolution : 


The Archbishop of Rheims, as he returned yesterday from St. Germain, 
met with a curious adventure. He drove at his usual rate, like a whirl- 
wind. If he thinks himself a great man, his servants think him still greater. 
They passed through Nanterre, when they met a man on horseback, and 
in an insolent tone bid him clear the way. The poor man used his utmost 
endeavors to avoid the danger that threatened him, but his horse proved 
unmanageable. To make short of it, the coach-and-six turned them both 
topsy-turvy; but at the same time the coach, too, was completely over- 
turned. In an instant the horse and the man, instead of amusing them- 
selves with having their limbs broken, rose almost miraculously; the man 
remounted, and galloped away, and is galloping still, for aught I know; 
while the servants, the archbishop’s coachman, and the archbishop him- 
self at the head of them, cried out, “ Stop that villain! stop him! thrash 
him soundly!” The rage of the archbishop was so great, that afterward, in 
relating the adventure, he said if he could have caught the rascal he 
would have broke all his bones, and cut off both his ears. 


If such things were done by the aristocracy—and the spir- 
itual aristocracy at that !—in the green tree, what might not 
be expected from them in the dry? The writer makes no 
comment—draws no moral. ‘Adieu, my dear, delightful 
child. I cannot express my eagerness to see you,” are her 
next words. She rattles along, three short sentences more, 
and finishes her letter. 

We should still not have done with these letters were we 
to go on a hundred pages, or two hundred, farther. Readers 
have already seen truly what Madame de Sévigné is, They 
have only not seen fully all that she is. And that they would 
not see short of reading her letters entire. Horace Walpole 
aspired to do in English for his own time something like what 
Madame de Sévigné had “one in French for hers. In a meas- 
ure he succeeded. The difference is, that he was imitative 
and affected, where she was original and genuine. . 

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu must, of course, also be 
named, as, by her sex, her social position, her talent, and the 


Madam de Sévigné. 117 





devotion of her talent, an English analogue to Madame de 
Sévigné. But these comparisons, and all comparison, leave 
the French woman without a true parallel, alone in her rank, 
the most famous letter-writer in the world. 


a 
CORNEILLE. 


1606-1684, 


Tue two great names in French tragedy are Corneille and 
Racine. French tragedy is a very different affair from either 
modern tragedy in English or ancient tragedy in Greek. It 
comes nearer being Roman epic, such as Lucan wrote Ro- 
man epic, dramatized. : 

Drama is everywhere and always, and this from the nature 
of things, a highly conventional literary form, But the con- 
vention under which French tragedy should be judged, dif- 
fers, on the one hand, from that which existed for Greek 
tragedy, and, on the other hand, from that existing for the 
English. The atmosphere of real life present in English 
tragedy is absent in French. The quasi-supernatural relig- 
ious awe that reigned over Greek tragedy, French tragedy 
does not affect. You miss also in French tragedy the severe 
simplicity, the self-restraint, the statuesque repose, belonging 
to the Greek model. Loftiness, grandeur, a loftiness some- 
what strained, a grandeur tending to be tumid, an heroic 
tone sustained at sacrifice of ease and nature—such is the 
element in which French tragedy lives and flourishes. You 
must grant your French tragedists this their conventional 
privilege, or you will not enjoy them. You must grant them 
this, or you cannot understand them. Resolve that you will 
like grandiloquence, requiring only that the grandiloquence 
be good, and on this condition we can promise that you will 
be pleased with Corneille and Racine. In fact, our readers, 


a - 


118 Classie French Course in English. 





we are sure, will find the grandiloquence of these two trag- 
edy-writers so very good that a little will suffice them. 

Voltaire in his time impressed himself strongly enough on 
his countrymen to get accepted by his own generation as an 
equal third in tragedy with Corneille and Racine, There 
was then a French triumvirate of tragedists to be paralleled ° 
with the triumvirate of the Greeks. Corneille was Aischy- 
lus ; Racine was Sophocles; and, of’ course, Euripides had 
his counterpart in Voltaire. Voltaire has since descended 
from the tragic throne, and that neat symmetry of trine com- 
parison is spoiled. There is, however, some trace of justice 
in making Corneille as related to Racine resemble Auschylus 
as related to Sophocles. Corneille was first, more rugged, 
loftier ; Racine was second, more polished, more severe in 
taste. Racine had, too, in contrast with Corneille, more of 
the Euripidean sweetness. In fact, La Bruyére’s celebrated 
comparison of the two Frenchmen—made, of course, before 
Voltaire—yoked them, Corneille with Sophocles, Racine 
with Euripides. Mr. John Morley, however, in his elaborate 
monograph on Voltaire, remarks: “ He [Voltaire] is usually 
considered to hold the same place relatively to Corneille 
and Racine that Euripides held relatively to Adschylus and 
Sophocles.” 

It was perhaps not without its influence on the style of 
Corneille, that a youthful labor of his in authorship was to 
translate, wholly or partially, the ‘Pharsalia” of Lucan. 
His fondness for Lucan, Corneille always retained. This taste 
on his part, and the rhymed Alexandrines in which he wrote 
tragedy, may together help account for the hyperheroic 
style which is Corneille’s great fault. A lady criticised his 
tragedy, “The Death of Pompey,” by saying : “ Very fine, 
but too many heroes in it.” Corneille’s tragedies generally 
have, if not too many heroes, at least too much hero, in them. 
Concerning the historian Gibbon’s habitual pomp of expres- 
sion, it was once wittily said that nobody could possibly tell 
the truth in such a style as that. It would be equaily near 
the mark if we should say of Corneille’s chosen mold of 


Corneille, 119 





verse, that nobody could possibly be simple and natural in 
that. Moliére’s comedy, however, would almost confute 
us. 

Pierre Corneille was born in Rouen. He studied law, and 
he was admitted to practice as an advocate, like Moliére ; 
but, like Moliére, he heard and he heeded an inward voice 
summoning him away from the bar to the stage. Corneille 
did not, however, like Moliére, tread the boards as an actor. 
He had a lively sense of personal dignity. He was eminent- 
ly the “lofty, grave tragedian,” in his own esteem. “ But I 
am Pierre Corneille notwithstanding,” he self-respectingly 
said once, when friends were regretting to him some defi- 
ciency of grace in his personal carriage. One can imagine 
him taking off his hat to himself with unaffected deference. 

But this serious genius began dramatic composition with 
writing comedy. He made several experiments of this kind 
with no commanding success; but at thirty he wrote the 
tragedy of “The Cid,” and instantly became famous. His 
subsequent plays were chiefly on classical subjects. The sub- 
ject of “The Cid” was drawn from Spanish literature. This 
was emphatically what has been called an “ epoch-making ” 
production. Richeliew’s “ Academy,” at the instigation, in- 
deed almost under the dictation, of Richelieu, who was jeal- 
ous of Corneille, tried to write it down. They succeeded 
about as Balaam succeeded in prophesying against Israel. 
“The Cid” triumphed over them, and over the great minis- 
ter. It established not only Corneille’s fame, but his author- 
ity. The man of genius taken alone proved stronger than 
the men of taste taken together. 

For all this, however, our readers would hardly relish 
“The Cid.” Let us go at once to that tragedy of Corneille’s 
which, by the general consent of French critics, is the best 
work of its author, the “Polyeuctes.” The following is the 
rhetorical climax of praise in which Gaillard, one of the most 
enlightened of Corneille’s eulogists, arranges the different 
masterpieces of his author: “‘‘The Cid’ raised Corneille above 
his rivals; the ‘Horace’ and the ‘Cinna’ above his models ; 


120 Classic French Course in English. 





the ‘Polyeuctes’ above himself.” This tragedy will, we 
doubt not, prove to our readers the most interesting of all 
the tragedies of Corneille. 

“The great Corneille ”—to apply the traditionary designa- 
tion which, besides attributing to our tragedian his conceded 
general eminence in character and genius, serves also to dis- 
tinguish him by merit from his younger brother, who wrote 
very good tragedy—was an illustrious figure at the Hotel de 
Rambouillet, that focus of the best literary criticism in France. 
Corneille reading a play of his to the coterie of wits assembled 
there under the presidency of ladies whose eyes, as in a kind 
of tournament of letters, rained influence on authors, and 
judged the prize of genius, is the subject of a striking picture 
by a French painter. Corneille read “ Polyeuctes ” at the Hotel 
Rambouillet, and that awful court decided against the play. 
Corneille, like Michael Angelo, had to a good degree the 
courage of his own productions: but, in the face of adverse 
decision so august on his work, he needed encouragement, 
which happily he did not fail to receive, before he would 
allow his “Polyeuctes” to be represented. The theatre 
crowned it with the laurels of victory. It thus fell to Cor- 
neille to triumph successively, single-handed, over two great 
adversary courts of critical appreciation—the Academy of 
Richelieu and the not less formidable Hétel de Rambouillet. 

The objection raised by the Hotel de Rambouillet against the 
“Polyeuctes” was that it made the stage encroach on the pre- 
rogative of the pulpit, and preach instead of simply amusing. 
And, indeed, never, perhaps, since the Greek tragedy, was the 
theatre made so much to serve the solemn purposes of religion. 
(We except the miracle and passion plays and the mysteries 
of the Middle Ages, as not belonging within the just bounds 
of a comparison like that now made.) Corneille’s final influ- 
ence was to elevate and purify the French theatre. In his 
early works, however, he made surprising concessions to the 
lewd taste in the drama that he found prevailing when he 
began to write. With whatever amount of genuine religious 
scruple affecting his conscience—on that point we need not 


Cornelia. 121 





judge the poet—Corneille used, before putting them on the 
stage, to take his plays to the “ Church”—that is, to the 
priestly hierarchy who constituted the “‘ Church ”—that they 
might be authoritatively judged as to their possible influence 
on the cause of Christian truth. 

In the “ Polyeuctes” the motive is religion. Polyeuctes is 
historic or traditional saint of the Roman Catholic church. 
His conversion from paganism is the theme of the play. 
Polyeuctes has a friend Nearchus who is already a Christian 
convert, and who labors earnestly to make Polyeuctes a 
proselyte to the faith. Polyeuctes has previously married a 
noble Roman lady, daughter of Felix, governor of Armenia, 
in which province the action of the story occurs. (The perse- 
cuting Emperor Decius is on the throne of the Roman world.) 
Paulina married Polyeuctes against her own choice, for she 
loved Roman Severus better. Her father had put his will 
upon her, and Paulina had filially obeyed in marrying Poly- 
euctes. Such are the relations of the different persons of the 
drama. It will be seen that there is ample room for the play 
of elevated and tragic passions. Paulina, in fact, is the lofty, 
the impossible, ideal of wifely and daughterly truth and devo- 
tion. Pagan though she is, she is pathetically constant, both 
to the husband that was forced upon her, and to the father 
that did the forcing ; while still she loves, and cannot but 
love, the man whom, in spite of her love for him, she, with an 
act like prolonged suicide, stoically separates from her torn 
and bleeding heart. 

But Severus on his part emulates the nobleness of the 
woman whom he vainly loves. Learning the true state of the 
case, he rises to the height of his opportunity for magnani- 
mous behavior, and bids the married pair be happy in a long 
life together. 

A change in the situation occurs, a change due to the 
changed mood of the father, Felix. Felix learns that Severus 
is high in imperial favor, and he wishes now that Severus, 
instead of Polyeuctes, were his son-in-law. A decree 


of the emperor makes it possible that this preferable 
6 


122 Classic French Course in English. 





alternative may yet be realized. For the emperor has de- 
creed that Christians must be persecuted to the death, and 
Polyeuctes has been baptized a Christian—though of this 
Felix will not hear till later. 

A solemn sacrifice to the gods is to be celebrated in honor 
of imperial victories lately won. Felix sends to summon. 
Polyeuctes, his son-in-law. To Felix’s horror, Polyeuctes,: 
with his friend Nearchus, coming to the temple, proceeds in a 
frenzy of enthusiasm to break and dishonor the images of the 
gods, proclaiming himself a Christian. In obedience to the 
imperial decree, Nearchus is hurried to execution, in the sight 
of his friend, while Polyeuctes is thrown into prison to repent 
and recant. 

‘“* Now is my chance,” muses Felix. ‘I dare not disobey the 
emperor to spare Polyeuctes. Besides, with Polyeuctes once out 
of the way, Severus and Paulina may be husband and wife.” 

Polyeuctes in prison hears that his Paulina is coming to see 
him. With a-kind of altruistic nobleness which seems con- 
tagious in this play, Polyeuctes resolves that Severus shall 
come too, and he will resign his wife, soon to be a widow, to 
the care of his own rival, her Roman lover. First, Poly- 
euctes and Paulina are alone together—Polyeuctes having, 
before she arrived, fortified his soul for the conflict with her 
tears, by singing in his solitude a song of high resolve and of 
anticipative triumph over his temptation. 

The scene between Paulina, exerting all her power to de- 
tach Polyeuctes from what she believes to be his folly, and 
Polyeuctes, on the other hand, rapt to the pitch of martyr- 
dom, exerting all his power to resist his wife, and even to 
convert her—this scene, we say, is full of noble height and. 
pathos, as pathos and height were possible in the verse which 
Corneille had to write. Neither struggler in this tragic strife 
moves the other. Paulina is withdrawing when Severus en- 
ters. She addresses her lover severely, but Polyeuctes inter- 
venes to defend him, Ina short scene, Polyeuctes, by a sort 
of last will and testament, bequeaths his wife to his rival, and 
retires with his guard. Now, Severus and Paulina are alone 


Corneille. 123 





together. If there was a trace of the false heroic in Poly- 
euctes’s resignation of his wife to Severus, the effect of that 
is finely counteracted by the scene which immediately follows 
between Paulina and Severus. Severus begins doubtfully, 
staggering, as it were, to firm posture, while he speaks to 
Paulina. He expresses amazement at the conduct of Poly- 
euctes. Christians certainly deport themselves strangely, he 
says. He at length finds himself using the following lover- 
like language : 


As for me, had my destiny become a little earlier propitious and hon- 
ored my devotion by marriage with you, I should have adored only the 
splendor of your eyes; of them I should have made my kings; of them I 
should have made my gods; sooner would I have been reduced to dust, 
sooner would I have been reduced to ashes, than— 


But here Paulina interrupts, and Severus is not permitted 
to finish his protestation. Her reply is esteemed, and justly 
esteemed, one of the noblest things in French tragedy—a 
French critic would be likely to say, the very noblest in 
tragedy. She says: 


Let us break off there; I fear listening too long; I fear lest this warmth 
which feels your first fires, force on some sequel unworthy of us both. 
[ Voltaire, who edited Corneille with a feeling of freedom toward a na- 
tional idol comparable to the sturdy independence that animated John- 
son in annotating Shakespeare, says of “This warmth which feels your 
first fires and which forces on a sequel:” “That is badly written, 
agreed; but the sentiment gets the better of the expression, and what fol- 
lows is of a beauty of which there had been no example. The Greeks 
were [rigid declaimers in comparison with this passage of Corneille.”] 
Severus, learn to know Paulina all in all. 

My Polyeuctes touches on_his last hour; he has but a moment to live; 
yon are the cause of this, though innocently so. I know not if your 
heart, yielding to: your desires, may have dared build any hope on his: 
destruction; but know that there is no death so cruel that to it with firm 
brow I would not bend my steps, that there are in hell no horrors that I 
would not endure, rather than soil a glory so pure, rather than espouse, after 
his sad fate, a man that was in any wise the cause of his death; and if you 
suppose me of a heart so little sound, the love which I had for you would 
all turn to hate. You are generous; be soeven tothe end, My father 
is in a state to yield every thing to you; he fears you; and I furiher 


124 Classic French Course in Eng wig lhceal 





- hazard this saying. that, if he destroys my husband, it is to you that he 
sacrifices him. Save this unhappy man, use your influence in his favor, 
exert yourself to become his support. I know that this is much that [ 
ask; but the greater the effort, the greater the glory from it. To pre- 
serve a rival of whom you are jealous, that is a trait of virtue which ap- 
pertains only to you. And if your renown is not motive sufficient, it is 

- much that a woman once so well beloved, and the love of whom perhaps 
is still capable of touching you, will owe to your great heart the dearest 

_ possession that she owns;- remember, in short, that you are Severus. 
Adieu. Decide with yourself alone what you ought to do; if you are not 
such as I dare to hope that you are, then, in order that I may coutinue to 

_. esteem you, I wish not to know it. 


Voltaire, as editor and commentator of Corneille, is freez- 
ingly cold. It is difficult not to feel that at heart he was un- 
friendly to the great tragedist’s fame. His notes often are 
remorselessly grammatical. “This is not French”; “This is 
not the right word”; “According to the construction, this 
should mean so and so—according to the sense it must mean so 
and so”; “This is hardly intelligible”; “It isa pity that such 
or such a fault should mar these fine verses”; ‘‘An expres- 
sion for comedy rather than tragedy ”—are the kind of re- 
marks with which Voltaire chills the enthusiasm of the reader. 
It is useless, however, to deny that the criticisms thus made 
are, many of them, just. Corneille does not belong to the 
class of the “faultily faultless ” writers. 

Severus proves equal to Paulina’s noble hopes of him. 
With a great effort of self-sacrifice, he resolves to intercede for 
Polyeuctes. This is shown in an interview between Severus and 
his faithful attendant Fabian. Fabian-warns him that he ap- 
peals for Polyeuctes at_his own peril. Severiis loftily replies 
(and here follows one of the most lauded passages in the play: ) 


’ ‘That advice might be good for some common soul. Though he [‘he Em- 
_ peror Decius] holds iti his hands my life and my fortune, I am yet Severus; 
“and all that mighty power is powerless over my glory, and powerless 
3 over my duty. Here honor compels me, and I will satisfy it; whether 
* fate afterward show itself propitious or adverse, perishing glorions Ishall 

_ perish content. 
I will tell thee” further, but under ‘confidence, the sect of Christians is 
“wot whatit ig thought’ tobe: ‘The -yaré hated, why I know not; and I 


- 


3 Corneille. 125 





see Decius unjust only in this regard. From curiosity I have souglit to 
become acquainted with them. They are regarded as sorcerers taught 
from hell; and, in this supposition, the punishment of death is visited on 
secret mysteries which we do not understand. But Eleusinian Ceres and 
the Good Guddess have their secrets, like those at Rome and in Greece ; 
still we freely tolerate everywhere, their God alone excepted, every kiud of 
god; all the monsters of Egypt have their temples in Rome; our fathers, 
at their will, made a god of aman; and, their blood in our veins preserv- 
ing their errors, we fill heaven with all our emperors; but, to speak 
without disguise of deifications so numerous, the effect is very doubtful 
of such metamorphoses. 

Christians have but one God, absolute master of all, whose mere will 
does whatever he resolves; but, if I may venture to say what seems to 
me true, our gods very often agree ill together; and, though their wrath. 
crush me before your eyes, we have a good many of them for them to be 
true gods. Finally, among the Christians, morals are pure, vices are 
hated, virtues flourish; they offer prayers on behalf of us who persecute 
them; and, during all the time since we have tormented them, have they 
ever been seen mutinous? Have they ever been seen rebellious? Have 
our princes ever had more faithful soldiers? Fierce in war, they submit. 
themselves to our executioners; and, lions in combat, they die like lambs. 
I pity them too much not to defend them. Come, let us find Felix; let 
us commune with his son-in-law; and let us thus, with one single action, 
gratify at once Paulina, and my glory, and my compassion. 


Such is the high heroic style in which pagan Severus re- 
solves and speaks. And thus the fourth act ends. 

Felix makes a sad contrast with the high-heartedness which 
the other characters, most of them, display. He is base 
enough to suspect that Séverus is base enough to be false and 
treacherous in his act of intercession for Polyeuctes. He im- 
agines he detects a plot against himself to undermine him with 
the emperor. Voltaire criticises Corneille for giving this 
sordid character to Felix. He thinks the tragedist might. 
better have let Felix be actuated by zeal for the pagan gods. 
The mean selfishness that animates the governor, Voltaire. 
regards as below the right tragic pitch. It is the poet him- 
self, no doubt, with that high Roman fashion of his, who, un- 
consciously to the critic, taught him to make the criticism. 

Felix summons Polyeuctes to an interview, and adjures_ 
him to be a prudent man. Felix at length says, “‘ Adore the. 


126 Classic French Course in English. 





gods or die.” ‘Iam a Christian,” simply replies the martyr. 
“Impious! Adore them, I bid you, or renounce life.” (Here 
again Voltaire offers one of his refrigerant criticisms: ‘“Je- 
nounce life does not advance upon the meaning of die ; when 
one repeats the thought, the expression should be strength- 
ened.”) Paulina meantime has entered to expostulate with 
Polyeuctes and with her father. Polyeuctes bids her, “ Live 
with Severus.” He says he has revolved the subject, and he 
is convinced that another love is the sole remedy for her woe. 
He proceeds in the calmest manner to point out the advan- 
tages of the course recommended. Voltaire remarks—justly 
we are bound to say—that these maxims are here somewhat 
revolting; the martyr should have had other things to say. 
On Felix’s final word, “ Soldiers, execute the order that I have 
given,” Paulina exclaims, “ Whither are you taking him ?” 
“To death,” says Felix. “To glory,” says Polyeuctes, “Ad- 
mirable dialogue, and always applauded,” is Voltaire’s note 
on this. 

The tragedy does not end with the martyrdom of Polyeuc- 
tes. Paulina becomes a Christian, but remains pagan 
enough to call her father “ barbarous,” in acrimoniously bid- 
ding him finish his work by putting his daughter also to 
death. Severus reproaches Felix for his cruelty, and threat- 
ens him with his own enmity. Felix undergoes instantane- 
ous conversion—a miracle of grace which, under the cireum- 
stances provided by Corneille, we may excuse Voltaire for 
laughing at. Paulina is delighted; and Severus asks, “ Who 
would not be touched by a spectacle so tender ?” 

The tragedy thus comes near ending happily enough to 
be called a comedy. 

Such as the foregoing exhibits him is the father of French 
tragedy, Corneille, where at his best; where at his worst, he 
is something so different that you would hardly admit him to 
be the same man. For never was genius more unequal in 
different manifestations of itself, than Corneille in his differ- 
ent works. Moliére is reported to have said that Corneille 
had a familiar, or a fairy, that came to him at times, and en- 


Corneille. 127 





abled him to write sublimely; but that, when the poet was 
left to himself, he could write as poorly as another man, 

Corneille produced some thirty-three dramatic pieces in all, 
but of these not more than six or seven retain their place on 
the French stage. 

Corneille and Bossuet together constitute a kind of rank 
by themselves among the Dii Majores of the French literary 
Olympus. 


XI. 
RACINE. 


1639-1699. 


Jean Ractye was Pierre Corneille reduced to rule. The 
younger was to the elder somewhat as Sophocles or Euripi- 
des was to Aischylus, as Virgil was to Lucretius, as Pope 
was to Dryden. Nature was more in Corneille, art was more 
in Racine. Corneille was a pathfinder in literature. He led 
the way even for Moliére still more for Racine. But Racine 
was as much before Corneille in perfection of art as Corneille 
was before Racine in andacity of genius. Racine, accord- 
ingly, is much. more even and uniform than Corneille. 
Smoothness, polish, ease, grace, sweetness—these, and mo- 
notony in these, are the mark of Racine. But if there is, in 
the latter poet, less to admire, there is also less to forgive. 
His taste and his judgment were surer than the taste and the 
judgment of Corneille. He enjoyed, moreover, an inestimable 
advantage in the life-long friendship of the great critic of his 
time, Boileau. Boileau was a literary conscience to Racine. 
He kept Racine constantly spurred to his best endeavors in 
art. Racine was congratulating himseif to his friends on the 
ease with which he produced his verse. “Let me teach you 
to produce easy verse with difficulty,” was the critic’s admi- 
rable reply. Racine was a docile pupil. He became as 
painstaking an artist in verse as Boileau would have him. 

It will always be a matter of individual taste, and of 


128 Classie French Course in English. 





changing fashion in criticism, to decide which of the two is, 
on the whole, to be preferred to the other. Racine eclipsed 
Corneille in vogue during the lifetime of the latter. 
Corneille’s old age was, perhaps, seriously saddened by the 
consciousness, which he could not but have, of being retired 
from the place of ascendency once accorded to him over all. 
His case repeated the fortune of Atschylus im relation to 
Sophocles. The eighteenth century, taught by Voltaire, 
established the precedence of Racine. But the nineteenth 
century has restored the crown to the brow of Corneille. To 
such mutations is subject the fame of an author. 

Jean Racine was early left an orphan. His grandparents 
put him, after preparatory training at another estuablish- 
ment, to school at Port Royal, where during three years he 
had the best opportunities of education that the kingdom 
afforded. His friends wanted to make a clergyman of him; 
but the preferences of the boy prevailed,and he addicted him- 
self to literature. The Greek tragedists became familiar to 
him in his youth, and their example in literary art exercised a 
sovereign influence over Racine’s development as author. It 
pained the good Port-Royalists to see their late gifted pupil, 
now out of their hands, inclined to write plays. Nicole 
printed a remonstrance against the theater, in which Racine 
discovered something that he took to slant anonymously at 
himself. He wrote a spirited reply, of which no notice was 
taken by the Port-Royalists. Somebody, however, on their 
behalf, rejoined to Racine, whereupon the young author 
wrote a second letter tothe Port-Royalists, which he showed 
to his friend Boileau. “This may do credit to your head, 
but it will do none to your heart,” was that faithful mentor’s 
comment, in returning the document. Racine suppressed 
his second letter, and did his best to recall the first. Buthe 
went on in his course of writing for the stage. 

Racine’s second tragedy, the “ Alexander the Great,” the 
youthful author took to the great Corneille, to get his judg- 
ment on it. Corneille was thirty-three years the senior 
of Racine, and he was at this time the undisputed master of 


Racine. 129 





French tragedy. ‘“ You have undoubted talent for poetry 
—for tragedy, not; try your hand in some other poetical 
line,” was Corneille’s sentence on the unrecognized young. 
rival, who was so soon to supplant him in popular favor. 

It wasa pretty, girlish fancy of the brilliant Princess 
Henriette (that same daughter of English Charles L, Bos- 
suet’s funeral oration on whom, presently to be spoken of, is 
so celebrated) to engage the two great tragedists, Corneille 
and Racine, both at once, in labor, without their mutual 
knowledge, upon the same subject—a subject which she her- 
self, drawing it from the history of Tacitus, conceived to be 
eminently fit for tragical treatment. Corneille produced his 
* Berenice” and Racine his “Titus and Berenice.” The prin- 
cess died before the two plays which she had inspired were 
produced; but, when they were produced, Racine’s work won 
the palm. The rivalry created a bitterness between the two 
authors, of which, naturally, the defeated one tasted the 
more deeply. An ill-considered pleasantry, too, of Racine’s, 
in makiny out of one of Corneille’s tragic lines in his “ Cid,” 
a comic line for “ The Suitors,” hurt the old man’s pride. That 
pride suffered a worse hurt still. The chief Parisian theater, 
completely occupied with the works of his victorious rival, 
rejected tragedies offered by Corneille. 

Still, Racine did not have things all hisown way. Some 
good critics considered the rage for this younger dramatist a 
mere passing whim of fashion. 'These—Madame de Sévigné 
was of them—stood by their “old admiration,” and were true 
to Corneille. 

A memorable mortification and chagrin for our poet was 
now prepared by his enemies—he seems never to have lacked 
enemies—with lavish and elaborate malice. Racine had pro- 
duced a play from Euripides, the “ Phsedra,” on which he had 
unstintingly bestowed his best genius and his best art. It was 
contrived that another poet, one Pradon, should, at the selt- 
same moment, have a play represented «n the self-same sub- 
ject. At a cost of many thousands of dollars, the best seats 


at Racine’s theater were all bought by his enemies, and left 
6* 


130 Classie French Course in English. 





solidly vacant. The best seats at Pradon’s theater were all 
bought by the same interested parties, and duly occupied 
with industrious and zealous applauders. This occurred at six 
successive representations. The result was the immediate 
apparent triumph of Pradon over the humiliated Racine. 
Boileau in vain bade his friend be of good cheer, and await 
the assured reversal of the verdict. Racine was deeply 
wounded. 

This discomposing experience of the poet’s, joined with 
conscientious misgivings on his part as to the propriety of 
his course in writing for the stage, led him now, at the early 
age of thirty-eight, to renounce tragedy altogether. His son 
Louis, from whose life of Racine we have chiefly drawn our 
material for the present sketch, conceives this change in his 
father as a profound and genuine religious conversion, 
Writers whose spirit inclines them not to relish a condem- 
nation such as seems thus to be reflected on the theater take 
a less charitable view of the change. They account for it as 
a reaction of mortified pride. Some of them go so far as 
groundlessly to impute sheer hypocrisy to Racine. 

A long interval of silence, on Racine’s part, had elapsed, 
when Madame de Maintenon, the wife of Louis XIV., asked 
the unemployed poet to prepare a sacred play for the use of 
the high-born girls educated under her care at St. Cyr. 
Racine consented, and produced his “ Esther.” This achieved 
a prodigious success; for the court took it up, and an exer- 
cise written for a girls’ school became the admiration of a 
kingdom, A second similar play followed, the “ Athaliah ”— 
the last, and, by general agreement, the most perfect work of 
its author. We thus reach that tragedy of Racine’s which 
both its fame and its character dictate to us as the one by 
eminence to be used here in exhibition of the quality of this 
Virgil among tragedists. 

Our readers may, if they please, refresh their recollection 
of the history on which the drama is founded by perusing 
Second Kings, chapter eleven, and Second Chronicles, chap- 
ters twenty-two and twenty-three. Athaliah, whose name 


Racine. 131 





gives its title to the tragedy, was daughter to the wicked 
king, Ahab. She reigns as queen at Jerusalem over the 
kingdom of Judah. To secure her usurped position, she had 
sought to kill all the descendants of King David, even her 
own grandchildren, She had succeeded, but not quite. 
Young Joash escaped, to be secretly reared in the temple by 
the high-priest. The final disclosure of this hidden prince, 
.and his coronation as king in place of usurping Athaliah, 
destined to be fearfully overthrown, and put to death in his 
name, afford the action of the play. Action, however, there 
is almost none in classic French tragedy. The tragic drama 
is, with the French, as it was with the Greeks, after whom 
it was framed, merely a succession of scenes in which 
speeches are made by the actors. Lofty declamation is 
always the character of the play. In the “ Athaliah,” as in 
the “ Esther,” Racine introduced the feature of the chorus, a 
restoration which had all the effect of an innovation. The 
chorus in “ Athaliah ” consisted of Hebrew virgins, who at 
intervals marking the transitions between the acts, chanted 
the spirit of the piece in its successive stages of progress 
toward the final catastrophe. The “ Athaliah” is almost proof 
against technical criticism. It is acknowledged to be, after 
its kind, a nearly ideal product of art. 

First, in specimen of the choral feature of the drama, we 
content ourselves with giving a single chorus from the 
“ Athaliah.” This we turn into rhyme, clinging pretty closely 
all the way to the form of the original, Attentive readers 
may, in one place of our rendering, observe an instance of 
identicalrhyme. ‘This, in a piece of verse originally written in 
English, would, of course, be a fault. In translation from 
French, it may pass for a merit; since, to judge from the 
practice of the national poets, the French ear seems to be even 
better pleased with such strict identities of sound, at the 
close of corresponding lines, than it is with those definite 
mere resemblances to which, in English versification, rhymes 
are rigidly limited. 

Suspense between hope and dread, dread preponderating, 


132 Classic French Course in English. 





is the state of fecling represented in the pee chorus, 
Salomith is the leading singer: 


j SALOMITH. 
The Lord hath deigned to speak, 
But what he to his prophet now hath shown— 
Who unto us will make it clearly known? 
Arms he himself to save us, poor and weak ? 
Arms he himself to have us overthrown ? 


THE WHOLE CHORUS. 
O promises! O threats! O mystery profound! 
What woe, what weal, are each in turn foretold ? 
How can so much of wrath be found 
So much of love to enfold ? 


A VOICE. 
Zion shall be no more; a cruel flame 
Will all her ornaments devour. 


A SEcoND VOICE. 
God shelters Zion; she has shield and tower 
In his eternal name. 


First Voice, 
T see her splendor al] from vision disappear. 


Seconp VOICE, 
I see on every side her glory shine more clear, 


First VOICE. 
Into a deep abyss is Zion sunk from sight. 


Seconp VOICE. 
Zion lifts up her brow amid celestial light. 


First VOICE. ° 
What dire despair ! 


Second VOICE. 
What praise from every tongue! 


Figst VOICE. 
What cries of grief! 


SECOND VOICE, 
What songs of triumph sung! 


Raeine. 133 





A Turrp VOIce. 


Cease we to vex ourselves; our God, one day, 
Will this great mystery make clear, 


Att THREE VOICES. 


Let us his wrath revere, 
While on his love, no less, our hopes we stay. 


The catastrophe is reached in the coronation of little Joash 
as king, and in the destruction of usurping and wicked 
Athaliah. Little Joash, by the way, with his rather pre- 
cocious wisdom of reply, derived to himself for the moment 
a certain factitious interest, from the resemblance, meant by 
the poet to be divined by spectators, between him and the 
little Duke of Burgundy, Louis XIV.’s grandson, then of 
about the same age with the Hebrew boy, and of high 
reputation for mental vivacity. 

The scene in which the high-priest, Jehoiada, for the first 
time discloses to his foster-son, Joash, the latter’s royal 
descent from David, and his true heirship to the throne of 
Judah, will serve sufficiently to exhibit what maturity of 
modest and pious wisdom the dramatist attributes to this 
Hebrew boy of nine or ten years. Nine or ten years of age 
Racine makes Joash, instead of seven, as Scripture inter- 
preted without violence would make him. The lad has had 
his sage curiosity excited by seeing preparations in progress 
for some important ceremonial. That ceremonial is his own 
coronation, but he does not guess the secret. Nay, he has 
just touchingly asked his foster-mother, observed by him to 
be in tears: 


What pity touches you? Is it that, in a holocaust to be this day 
offered, I, like Jephtha’s daughter in other times, must pacify by my 
death the anger of the Lord? Alas, a son has nothing that does not 
belong to his father ! 


The discreet foster-mother refers the lad to her husband, 
Jehoiada, now approaching. Joash rushes into the arms of 
the high-priest, exclaiming, “My father!” “Well, my 
son?” the high-priest replies. “ What preparations, then, 


134. Classic French Course in English. 





are these?” asks Joash. The high-priest bids him prepare 
himself to listen and learn, the time being now come for him 
to pay his debt to God: 


Joash. I feel myself ready, if he wishes it, to give to him my life. 

Jehoiada. You lave often heard read the history of our kings. Do 
you remember, my son, what strict laws a king wortliy of the crown ought 
to impose upon himself? 

Joash. A wise and good king, so hath God himself declared, puts not 
his reliance upon riches. and gold; he fears the Lord his God, has ever 
before him his precepts, his laws, his judgments severe, and does nt 
with unjust burdens overwhelm his brethren. 


Fénelon had already been two years preceptor to the Duke 
of Burgundy when this tragedy was written. It is impossi- 
ble not to feel that Racine must have had that prince in 
mind when he put into the mouth of young Joash sentiments 
so likely to have been instilled into the heart of his royal 
pupil, the great king’s grandson, by such a preceptor as 
Fénelon. How could the selfish old monarch of France con- 
trive to avoid recognizing his own portrait suggested by 
contrast in that description of the good king from the lips 
of little Joash? Racine was here treading on treacherous 
ground. He will presently find his footing quite give way 
under him, to let him down into the “ horrible pit ” of dis- 
grace with his king. This not, however, in the present play. 

The tragedist has generously bestowed upon wicked Queen 
Athaliah a certain loftiness of spirit which, in its display in 
the final catastrophe, almost redeems her to admiration, if 
not to sympathy. ‘here is nothing in the play more nearly 
sublime in declamation than the final speech in which Atha- 
liah greets her own doom, and blasphemously forecasts, for 
young King Joash, a future of apostasy from God, With this 
admirable piece of rhetoric, resembling a burst of blasphemy 
from Satan in “ Paradise Lost,” so far as 'rench poetry may 
be allowed to resemble English, we conclude our representa- 
tion of Racine. Athaliah has now just heard the announce- 
ment of things that assure her of the overthrow of her 
usurpation. She expresses herself in a speech, the first words 


tacine. _ 185 





of which were, no doubt, designed by the poet to recall the 
celebrated traditional exclamation of Julian the Apostate, 
uttered at a moment of irretrievable disaster to his impious 
hopes—“ O Galilean, thou hast conquered !” as follows: 


God of the Jews, ’tis thou that dost prevail! 

Ay, itis Juash; all without avail 

Seek I to cheat myself with other thought: 

I know the wound my weapon on him wrought; ° 
I see his father Alaziah’s face ; 

Nauglit but brings back to me that hated race. 
David doth triumph, Ahab only fall— 

Unupitying God, thou only hast done all! 

Tis thou that, flattering me to hope in vain 

For easy vengeance, o'er and o’er again 

Hast with myself myself embroiled anew, 

Now pangs of conscience rousing, not a few, 
Now dazzling me with thy rich treasures rare, 
Which I to burn or pillage did not dare. 

Let him, then, reign, this son, thy care, thy toil, 
And, so to signalize his new-got spoil, 

Let him into my bosom plunge the knife, 

And take with filial hand his mother’s life. 
Hearken what wish for him she dying breathes— 
Wish? nay, what hope, assuréd hope, bequeaths— 
That, disobedient, proud, rebellious, he, 

Faithful to Ahab’s blood received from me, 

To his grandfather, to his father, like, 

Abhorrent heir of David, down may strike 

Thy worship and thy fane, averger fell 

Of Athaliah, Ahab, Jezebel! 


With woxls thus rendered into such English verse as we 
could command for the purpose, Athaliah disappears from 
the stage. Her execution follows immediately. This is not 
exhibiced, but is announced with brief, solemn comment from 
Jehoiada. And so the tragedy ends. 

The interest of the piece, to the modern reader, is by no 
means equal to its fame. One reproaches one’s self, but one 
yawns in conscientiously perusing it. Still, one feels the 
work of the author to be irreproachably, nay, consummately, 
good. But fashions in taste change; and we cannot hold 


= 


136 Clussie French Course in English. 





ourselves responsible for admiring, or, at any rate, for enjoy- 
ing, according to the judgment of other races and of former 
generations. It is—so, with grave concurrence, we say—It 
is a great classic, worthy of the praise that.it receives. We 
are glad that we have read it; and, let us be candid, equally 
glad that we have not to read it again. 
_ As has already been intimated, Racine, after “* Athaliah,” 
wrote tragedy no more. He ceased to interest himself in 
the fortune of his plays. His son “ Louis,” in his Life of his 
father, testifies that he never heard his father speak in the 
family of the dramas that he had written. His theatrical 
triumphs seemed to afford him no pleasure. He repented of 
them rather than gloried in them. 

While one need not doubt that this regret of Racine’s for 
the devotion of his powers to the production of tragedy was 
a sincere regret of his conscience, one may properly wish 
that the regret had been more heroic. The fact is, Racine 
was somewhat feminine in character as well as in genius. 
He could not beat up with stout heart undismayed against 
an adverse wind. And the wind blew adverse at length to 
Racine, from the principal quarter, the court of Versailles. 
From being a chief favorite with his sovereign, Racine fell 
into the position of an exile from the royal presence. The 
immediate occasion was one honorable rather than otherwise 
to the poet. 

In conversation with Madame de Maintenon, Racine had 
expressed views on the state of France, and on the duties of 
a king to his subjects, which so impressed her mind that she 
desired him to reduce his observations to writing and con- 
fide them to her, she promising to keep them profoundly 
secret from Louis. But Louis surprised her with the manu- 
script in her hand, Taking it from her, he read in it, and 
demanded to know the author, Madame de Maintenon could 
not finally refuse to tell. ‘Does M. Racine, because he is a 
great poet, ‘think that he knows every thing ?” the despot 
angrily asked, Louis never spoke to Racine again. The 
distressed and infatuated poet still made some paltry request 


Racine. 137 





of the king—to experience the humiliation that he invoked. 
His request was not granted. Racine wilted, like a tender 
plant, under the sultry frown of his monarch. He could not 
rally. Ile soon after died, literally killed by the mere dis- 
pleasure of one man. Such was the measureless power 
wielded by Louis XIV.; such was the want of virile stuff in 
Racine. A spirit partly kindred to the tragedist, Archbishop 
Fénelon, will presently be shown to have had at about the 
same time a partly similar experience. 


STE eee 


BOSSUBT : 162'7-1'704; BOURDALOUE: 1632-11704; MASSILLON : 
1663-1'742; SAURIN: 16'7'7-1'730. 


We group four names in one title, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, 
Mass.llon, Saurin, to represent the pulpit orators of France. 
There are other great names—as Fléchier and Claude—but 
the names we choose are the greatest. 

Bossuet’s individual distinction is, that he was a great man 
as well as a great orator; Bourdaloue’s, that he was priest- 
and-preacher simply; Massillon’s, that his sermons, regarded 
quite independently of their subject, their matter, their occa- 
sion, regarded merely as masterpieces of style, became at 
once, and permanently became, a part of French literature ; 
Saurin’s, that he was the pulpit theologian of Protestantism. 

The greatness of: Bossuet is an article in the French 
national creed. No Frenchman disputes it; no Frenchman, 
indeed, but proclaims it. Protestant agrees with Catholic, 
infidel with Christian, at least in this. Bossuet, twinned here 
with Corneille, is to the Frenchman, as Milton is to the En- 
glishman, his synonym for sublimity. Eloquence, somehow, 
seems a thing too near the common human level to answer 
fully the need that Frenchmen feel in speaking of Bossuet. 
Bossuet is not eloquent, he is sublime. That in French it is 
in equal part oratory, while in English it is poetry almost 
alone, that supplies in literature its satisfaction to the senti- 


138 Classie French Course in English. 





ment of the sublime, very well represents the difference in 
genius between the two races. The French idea of poetry 
is eloquence; and it is eloquence carried to its height, whether 
in verse or in prose, that constitutes for the Frenchman 
sublimity. The difference is a difference of blood. English 
blood is Teutonic in base, and the imagination of the Teuton 
is poetic. French blood, in base, is Celtic; and the imagi- 
nation of the Celt is oratoric. 

Jacques Bénigne Bossuet was of good bourgeois, or middle- 
class, stock. He passed a well-ordered and virtuous youth, 
as if in prophetic consistency with what was to be his subse- 
quent career. He was brought forward while a young man 
in the Hétel de Rambouillet, where, on a certain occasion, he 
preached a kind of show sermon, under the auspices of his 
admiring patron. In due time he attracted wide public at- 
tention, not merely as an eloquent orator, but as a profound 
student and as a powerful controversialist. His character 
and influence became in their maturity such that La Bruyére 
aptly called him a “Father of the Church.” “The Cor- 
neille of the pulpit,” was Henri Martin’s characterization and 
praise. A third phrase, “the eagle of Meaux,” has passed 
into almost an alternative name for Bossuet. Ie soared like 
an eagle in his eloquence, and he was bishop of Meaux. 

Bossuet and Louis XIV. were exactly suited to each other, 
in the mutual relation of subject and sovereign. Bossuet 
preached sincerely—as every body knows Louis sincerely 
practiced—the doctrine of the divine right of kings to rule 
absolutely. But the proud prelate compromised neither his 
own dignity nor the dignity of the Church in the presence of 
the absolute monarch. 

Bossuet threw himself with great zeal, and to prodigious 
effect, into the controversy against Protestantism. His 
“ History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches,” in 
two good volumes, was one of the mightiest pamphlets ever 
written. As tutor to the Dauphin (the king’s eldest son), 
he produced, with other works, his celebrated “ Discourse on 

iver j ” 
Universal History. i 


Bossuet. 139 





In proceeding now to give, from the four great preachers 
named in our title, a few specimen passages of the most 
famous pulpit oratory in the world, we need to prepare our 
readers against a natural disappointment. That which they 
are about to see bas nothing in it of what will at first strike 
them as brilliant. The pulpit eloquence of the Augustan age 
of France was distinctly “classic,” and not at all “roman- 
tic,” in style. Its character is not ornate, but severe. There 
is little rhetorical figure in it, little of that “illustration ” 
which our own different national taste is accustomed to de- 
mand from the pulpit. There is plenty of white light, “dry 
light ” and white, for the reason; but there is almost no 
bright color for the fancy, and, it must be added, not a great 
deal of melting warmth for the heart. 

“Y The funeral orations of Bossuet are generally esteemed 
the masterpieces of this orator’s eloquence. He had great 
oceasions, and he was great to match them. Still, readers 
might easily be disappointed in perusing a funeral oration of 
Bossuet’s. The discourse will generally be found to deal in 
commonplaces of description, of reflection, and of sentiment. 
Those commonplaces, however, are often made very impress- 
ive by the lofty, the magisterial, the imperial manner of the 
preacher in treating them. We exhibit a specimen, a single 
specimen only, and a brief one, in the majestic exordium to 
the funeral oration on the Princess Ienrietta of England. 

This princess was the last one left of the children of King 
Charles I. of England. Her mother’s death—her mother 
was of the French house of Bourbon—had occurred but a 
short time before, and Bossuet had on that occasion pro- 
nounced the eulogy. The daughter, scarcely returned to 
France from a secret mission of state to England, the success 
of which made her an object of distinguished regard at Ver- 
sailles, suddenly fell ill and died. Bossuet was summoned 
to preach at her funeral. (We have not been able to find an 
English translation of Bossuet, and we accordingly make the 
present transfer from French ourselves. We do the same, 
for the same reason, in the case of Massillon. In the case of 


140 Classie French Course in English. 





Bourdaloue, we succeeded in obtaining a printed translation 
which we could modify to suit our purpose.) Bossuet: 


It was then reserved for my lect to pay this funereal tribute to the high 
and potent princess, Henrietta of England, Duchess of Orleans. She 
whom [ had seen so attentive while I was discharging a like office for 
the queen, her mother, was so soon after to be the subject of a similar 
discourse, and my sad voice was predestined to this melancholy service. 
O vanity! O nothingness! O mortals! ignorant of their destiny! Ten 
months ago would she have believed it? ~ And you, my hearers, would 
you have thought, while she was shedding so many tears in this place, 
that she was so soon to assemble you here to-deplore her own loss? O 
princess! the worthy object of the admiration of two great kingdoms, 
was it not enough that England should deplore your absence, without 
being yet further compelled to deplore your death? France, who with 
so much joy beheld you again, surrounded with a new brilliancy, had she 
not in reserve other pomps and other triumphs for you, returned from 
that famous voyage whence you had brought hither so much glory, and 
hopes so fair? “ Vanity of vanities ; all is vanity.” Nothing is left for 
me to say but that; that is the only sentiment which, in presence of 
so strange a casualty, grief so well-grounded aud_so poignant permits 
me to indulge. Nor have I explored the Holy Scriptures in order to find 
therein some text which [ might apply to this princess; I have taken, 
without premeditation and without choice, the first expression presented 
to me by the Preacher with whom vanity, although it has been so 
often named, is yet, to my mind, not named often enough to suit the 
purpose that I have in view. I wish, ina single misfortune, to lament all 
the calamities of the human race, and in a single death to exhibit the 
death and the nothingness of all human greatness. This text, which suits 
all the circumstances and all the occurrences of our life, becomes, by a 
special adaptedness, appropriate to my mournful theme; since never 
were the vanities of the earth either so clearly disclosed or so openly 
confounded. No, after what we have just seen, health is but a name, 
life is but a dream, glory is but a shadow, charms and pleasures are but 
a dangerous diversion. Every thing is vain within us, except the sincere 
acknowledgment made before God of our vanity, and the fixed judgment 
of the mind, leading us to despise all that we are. 

But did I speak the truth? Man, whom God made in his own image, 
is he but a shadow? That which Jesus Christ came from heaven to earth 
to seek, that which he deemed that he could, without degrading himself, 
ransom with his own blood, is that a mere nothing? Let us acknowledge 
our mistake; surely this sad spectacle of the vanity of things human was 
leading us astray, and public lope, baffled suddenly by the death of this 
princess, wus urging us too far. It must not be permitted to man to 


 Bossuet. 141 





’ despise himself entirely, lest he, supposing, in common with the wicked, 
that our life is but a game in which chance reigus, take his way 
without rule and without self-control, at the pleasure of his own 
blind wishes. It is for this reason that the Preacher, after having com- 
menced his inspired productiou by tle expression which I have cited, 

after having filled allits pages with contempt for things human, is pleased 
at last to show man something more substantial by saying to him, “ Fear 

- God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. 
For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, 
whether it be good, or whether it be evil.” Thus every thing is vain in 
man, if we regard what he gives to the world: but, on the contrary, ev: ry 
thing is important, if we consider what he owes to God. Ounce again: 
every thirg is vain in man, if we regard the course of his mortal life; but 
every thing is of value, every thing is important, if we contemplate the 
goal where it ends, and the account of it which he must render. Let us, 
therefore, meditate to-day, in presence of this altar and of this tomb, the 
first and the last utterance of the Preacher; of which the one shows thie 
nothingness of man, the other establishes his greatness. Let this tomb 
convince us of our nothingness, provided that this altar, where is daily 
offered for usa Victim of price so great, teach us at the same time our 
dignity. The princess whom we weep shall be a faithful witness, both of 
the one and of the other. Let us survey that which a sudden death has 
taken away from her; let us survey that which a holy death has 
bestowed upon her. Thus shall we learn to despise that which she 
quitted without regret, in order to attach all our regard to that which she 
embraced with so much ardor—wlien her soul, purified from all earthly 
sentiments, full of the heaven on whose border she touched, saw the light 
completely revealed. Such are the truths which I have to treat, and 
which I have deemed worthy to be proposed to so great a prince, and 
to the most illustrious assembly in the world. 


It will be felt how removed is the foregoing from any thing 
like aneffort,on the preacher’s part, to startle his audience’ 
with the far-fetched and unexpected. It must, howéver, be- 
admitted that Bossuet was not always—as, of our Webster,’ 
it has well been said ‘that he always was—superior to the 
temptation to exaggerate an occasion by pomps of rhetoric. 
Bossuet was a great man, but he was not quite great enough 
to be wholly free from pride of self-consciousness in match- 
ing himself as an orator against “ the most illustrious assem- 
bly in the world.” 

‘The ordinary sermons of Bossuet are less read, and they 


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perhaps less deserve to be read, than those vf Bourdaloue 
and Massillon. 


Vv BotRDALOvE was a voice. He was the voice of one cry- 
ing, not in the wilderness, but amid the homes and haunts of 
men, and, by eminence, in the court of the most powerful 
and most splendid of earthly monarchs. He was a Jesuit ; 
one of the most devoted and most accomplished of an order 
filled with devoted and accomplished men. It belonged to 
his Jesuit character and Jesuit training that Bourdaloue 
should hold the place that he did, as ever-successful courtier 
at Versailles, all the while that, as preacher, he was using 
the “holy freedom of the pulpit ” to launch those blank ful- 
minations of his at sin in high places, at sin even in the high- 
est, and all the briefer while that, as confessor to Madame 
de Maintenon, he was influencing the policy of Louis XIV. 

No scandal of any sort attaches to the reputation of Louis 
Bourdaloue. Je was a man of spotless fame—unless it be 
a spot on his fame that-he could please the most selfish of 
sinful monarchs well enough to be that monarch’s chosen 
preacher during a longer time than any other pulpit orator 
whatever was tolerated at Versailles. He is described by 
all who knew him as a man of gracious spirit. If he did not 
reprobate and denounce the revocation of the Edict of 
Nantes, that was rather of the age than of Bourdaloue. 

Sainte-Beuve, in a remarkably sympatheti¢e appreciation of 
Bourdaloue—free, contrary to the critic’s wont, from hostile 
insinuation even—regards it as part of the merit of this 
preacher that there is, and that there can be, no biography of 
him. [is public life is summed up in simply saying that he 
was a preacher. During thirty-four laborious and fruitful 
years he preached the doctrines of the Church; and this is 
the sole account to be given of him, except, indeed, that in 
the confessional he was, all that time, learning those secrets 
of the human heart which lie used to such effect in compos- 
ing his sermons. He had very suave and winning ways as 
coufessor, though he enjoined great strictness as preacher. 


‘Siiadleian 143 





This led a witty woman of his time to say of him: “Fa- 
ther Bourdaloue charges high in the pulpit, but he sells cheap 
in the confessional.” How much laxity he allowed as con- 
fessor, it is, of course, impossible to say. But his sermons 
remain to show that, though indeed he was severe and high 
in requirement as preacher, he did not fail to soften asperity 
by insisting on the goodness,while he insisted on the awfulness, 
of God. Still, it cannot be denied that somehow the ela’ - 
orate compliments which, as an established convention of his 
pulpit, he not infrequently delivered to Louis XIV., tended 
powerfully to make it appear that his stern denunciation of 
sin, which at first blush might seem dircctly leveled at the 
king, had in reality no application at all, or but the very 
gentlest application, to the particular case of his Most 
Christian Majesty. 

We begin our citations from Bourdaloue with an extract 
from a sermon of his on “A Perverted Conscience.” The 
whole discourse is one well worth the study of any reader. 
It is a piece of searching psychological analysis, and pungent 
application to conscience. Bourdaloue, in his sermons, has 
always the air of a man seriously intent on producing 
practical results. There are no false motions. Every sway- 
ing of the preacher’s weapon is a blow, and every blow is a 
hit. There is hardly another example in homiletic litera- 
ture of such compactness, such solidity, such logical con- 
secutiveness, such cogency, such freedom from surplusage. 
Tare and tret are excluded. Every thing counts. You meet 
‘with two or three adjectives, and you at first naturally as- 
sume, that, after the usual manner of homilists, Bourdaloue 
has thrown these in without rigorously definite purpose, 
simply to heighten a general effect. Not at all. There fol- 
lows a development of the preacher’s thought, constituting 
virtually a distinct justification of each adjective employed. 
You soon learn that there is no random, no waste, in this 
man’s words. But here is the promised extract from the 
sermon on “ A Perverted Conscience.” In it Bourdaloue de- 
presses his gun, and discharges it point-blank at the audience 


wT 


ur 


144 Classic French Course in English. 





before him. You can almost imagine you see the ranks of 
“the great” laid low. Alas! one fears that, instead of bit- 
ing the dust, those courtiers, with the king in the midst of 
them to set the example, only cried bravo in their hearts at 
the skill of the gunner: 


I have said more particularly that in the world in which you live—I 
mean the court—the disease of a perverted conscience is far more com- 
mon, and fur more difficult to be avoided; and Iam sure that in this you 
will agree with me. For it is at the court that the passions bear sway, 
that desires are more ardent, that self-interest is keener, and that, by 
infullible consequence, self-blinding is more easy, and consciences, even 
the most enlightened and the most upright, become gradually perverted. It 
is at te court that the goddess of the world, I mean fortune, exercises over 
the minds of men, and in consequence over their consciences, a more absolute 
dominion. Itvis at the court that the aim to maintain one’s self, the impa- 
tiencc to raise one’s self, the frenzy to push one’s self, the fear of displeasing, 
the desire of making one’s self agreeable, produce consciences which any- 
where else would pass for monstrous, but which, finding themselves 
there authorized by custom,-seem to have acquired a right of possession 
and of prescription. People, from living at eourt, aud from no other 
cause than having lived there, are filled with these errors. Whatever 
uprightness of conscience they may have brought thither, by breathing 
its air and by hearing its language they are habituated to iniquity, they- 
come to have less horror of vice, and, after having long blamed it, a 
thousand times condemned it, they at ]nst beliold it with a more favorable 
eye, tolerate it, excuse it; that is to say, without observing what is hap- 
pening, they make over their consciences, and, by insensible steps, from 
Christian, which they were, by little and little become quite worldly, and 
not far from pagan, 


What could surpass the adaptedness of such preaching as 
that to the need of the moment for which it was prepared ? 
And how did the libertine French monarch contrive to es- 
cape the force of truth like the following, with haters the 
preacher immediately proceeds ? 


You would say, and it really sean that for the court there are other 
principles of religion than for the rest of the world, and that the courtier has 
a right to make for himself conscience different in kind and in quality from 

that of other men; for such is the prevailiug idea of the matter—an idea’ 
- well sustained, or rather unfortunately justified, by experience. ... Nev- 


Bourdaloue. 145 





ertheless, my dear hearers, St. Paul assures us, that there is but one God 
and one faith; and woe to the man who dividing him, this one God, shall 
represent him as at court less an enemy to human transgressions than he is 
outside of the court; or, severing this one faith, shall suppose it in the case 
of one class more indulgent than in the case of another. 


Bourdaloue, as Jesuit, could not but feel the power of 
Pascal, in his “ Provincial Letters,” constantly undermining 
the authority of his order. His preaching, as Sainte-Beuve 
well says, may be considered to have been, in the preacher’s 
intention, one prolonged confutation of Pascal’s immortal in- 
dictment. We borrow of Sainte-Beuve a short extract from 
Bourdaloue’s sermon on slander, which may serve as an 
instance to show with what adroitness the Jesuit retorted | 
anonymously upon the Jansenist : 


Behold one of the abuses of our time. Means have been found to conse- 
crate slander, to change it into a virtue, and even into one of the holiest 
virtues—that means is, zeal for the glory of God. . . We must humble 
those people, is the ery; and it is for the good ofthe Church to tarnish 
their reputation and to diminish their credit. That idea becomes, as it were, 
a principle; the conscience is fashioned accordingly, and there is nothing 
that is not permissible to a motive so noble. You fabricate, you exaggerate, 
you give things a-poisonous taint, you tell but half the truth; you make 
your prejudices stand for indisputable facts ; you spread abroad a hundred 
falsehoods; you confound what isindividual with what is general; what 
one man has said thatis bad, you pretend that all have said; and what many 
have said that is good, you pretend that nobody has said; and all that once 
again for the glory of God. For such direction of the intention justifies 
all that. Such direction of the intention will not suffice to justify a pre- 
varication, but it is more than sufficient to justify calumny, provided 
only you are convinced that you are serving God thereby. 


In conclusion, we give a passage or two of Bourdaloue’s 
sermon on “An Eternity of Woe.” Stanch orthodoxy the 
reader will find here. President Edwards’s discourse, “Sin- 
ners in the Hands of an Angry God,” is not more unflinching. 
But what a relief of contrasted sweetness does Bourdaloue 
interpose in the first part of the ensuing extract, to set off 
the grim and grisly horror of that which is to follow! We 
draw, for this case, from a translation, issued in Dublin under 
Roman Catholic auspices, of select sermons by Bourdaloue. 


7 


146 Classie French Course in English. 





The translator, throughout his volume, has been highly loyal 
in spirit toward the great French preacher; but this has not 
prevented much enfeebling by him of the style of his 
original, to which we here do what we can to restore the tone : 


There are some: just, fervent, perfect souls, who, like children in the 
house of the Heavenly Father, strive to please and possess him, in order 
only to possess and to love him; and who, incessantly animated by this 
unselfish motive, inviolably adhere to his divine precepts, and lay it down 
as a rigorous and unalterable rule, to obey the least intimation of his 
will. They serve him with an affection entirely filial. But there are also 
dastards, worldlings, sinners, terrestrial and sensual men, who are scarcely 
susceptible of any other impressions than those of the judgments and 
vengeance of God. Talk to them of his greatness, of his perfections, of 
his benefits, or even of his rewards, and they will hardly listen to you; 
and, if they are prevailed upon to pay some attention and respect to your 
words, these will sound in their ears, but not reach their hearts. ... 
Therefore, to move them, to stir them up, to awaken them from the 
lethargic sleep with which they are overwhelmed, the thunder of divine 
wrath and the decree that condemns them to eternal flames must be 
dinned into their ears: “ Depart from me, ye accursed, into everlasting 
fire” (Matt. xxv). Make them consider attentively, and represent to 
them with all the force of grace, the consequences and horror of this 
word “eternal.” ... 


It is not imagination, it is pure reason and intelligence, 
that now in Bourdaloue goes about the business of impress- 
ing the thought of the dreadfulness of an eternity of woe. 
The effect produced is not that of the lightning-flash suddenly 

revealing the jaws agape of an unfathomable abyss directly 
before you. It is rather that of steady, intolerable pressure 
gradually applied to crush, to annihilate, the soul : 


. « « Struck with horror at sodoleful a destiny, I apply to this eternity 
all the powers of my mind; I examine and scrutinize it in all its parts; 
and I survey, as it were, its whole dimensions. Moreover, to express it 
in more lively colors, and to represent it in my mind more conformably to 
the senses and the human understanding, I borrow comparisons from the 
Fathers of the Church, and I make, if I may so speak, the same computa- 
tions. I figure to myself all the stars of the firmament; to this innu- 
merable multitude I add all the drops of water in the bosom of the ocean; 
and if this be not enough, I reckon, or at least endeavor to reckon, all 
the grains of sand on its shore, Then I interrogate myself, I reason with 


Bourdaloue. 147 





myself, and I put to myself the question: If I had for as many ages, and 
a thousand times as many, undergone torments in that glowing fire which 
is kindled by the breath of the Lord in his anger to take eternal vengeance, 
would eternity be at an end? No; and why? Because it is eternity, and 
eternity is endless, To number up the stars that shine in the heavens, 
to count the drops of water that compose the sea, to tell the grains of 
sand that lie upon the shore, is not absolutely impossible ; but to measure 
in eternity the number of days, of years, of ages, is what cannot be com- 
passed, because the days, the years, and the ages are without number; 
or to speak more properly, because in eternity there are neither days, 
nor years, nor ages, but a single endless, infinite duration. 

To this thought I devote my mind, I imagine I see and rove through 
this same eternity, and discover no end, but find it to be always a bound- 
less tract. I imagine that the wide prospect lies open on all sides, and 
encompasses me around: that if I rise up or if I sink down, or what way 
soever I turn my eyes, this eternity meets them; and that after a thousand 
efforts to get forward I have made no progress, but find it still eternity. 
I imagine that after long revolutions of time, I behold in the midst of this 
eternity a damned soul, in the same state, in the same affliction, in the 
same misery still; and putting myself mentally in the place of this soul, I 
imagine that in this eternal punishment I feel myself continually devoured 

’ by that fire which nothing extinguishes; that I continually shed those 
floods of tears which nothing can dry up; that I am continually gnawed 

_ by the worm of conscience, which never dies; that I continually express 
my despair and anguish by that gnashing of teeth, and those lamentable ~ 
cries, which never can move the compassion of God. This idea of myself, 
this representation, amazes and terrifies me. My whole body shudders, 
I tremble with fear, Iam filled with horror, I have the same feelings as the 
royal prophet when he cried, “ Pierce thou my flesh with thy fear, for I 
am-afraid of thy judgments.” 


That was a touching tribute from the elder to the younger 
—tribute touching, whether wrung, perforce, from a proudly 
humble, or freely offered by a simply magnanimous heart— 
when, like John the Baptist speaking of Jesus, Bourda- 
loue, growing old, said of Massillon, enjoying his swiftly 
crescent renown: “ He must increase, and I must decrease.” 
It was a true presentiment of the comparative fortune of 
fame that impended for thesetwo men. It was not, however, 
in the same path, but in a different, that Massillon outran 
Bourdaloue. In his own sphere, that of unimpassioned 
appeal to reason and to conscience, Bourdaloue is still with- 


148 Classie French Course in English. 





out arival. No one else, certainly, ever earned, so well as he, 
the double title which his epigrammatic countrymen were 
once fond of bestowing upon him—“ The king of preachers, 
and the preacher of kings.” 


Jean Baptiste Massmton became priest by. his own in- 
ternal sense of vocation to the office, against the preference 
of his family that he should become, like his father, a notary. 
He seems to have been by nature sincerely modest in 
spirit. He had to be forced into the publicity of a preaching 
career at Paris. His ecclesiastical superior peremptorily 
required at his hands the sacrifice of his wish to be obscure. 
He at once filled Paris with his fame. The inevitable con- 
sequence followed. He was summoned to preach before 
the king at Versailles. Here he received, as probably he 
deserved, that celebrated compliment in epigram from 
Louis XIV.: “In hearing some preachers, I feel pleased with 
them; in hearing you, I feel displeased with myself.” ~ 

It must not, however, be supposed that Massillon preached 
like a prophet Nathan saying to King David, “Thou art the 
man”; or like a John the Baptist saying to King Herod, “It 
is not lawful for thee to have her”; or like a John Knox 
denouncing Queen Mary. Massillon, if he was stern, was 
suavely stern. Hecomplimented the king. The sword with 
which he wounded was wreathed with flowers. It is difficult 
not to feel that some unspoken understanding subsisted 
between the preacher and the king, which permitted the 
king to separate the preacher from the man, when Massillon 
used that great plainness of speech to his sovereign. The 
king did not, however, often invite this master of eloquence 
to make the royal conscience displacent with itself. Bourda- 
loue was ostensibly as outspoken as Massillon ; but somehow 
that Jesuit preacher contented the king to be his hearer 
during as many as ten annual seasons, against the one or two 
only that Massillon preached at court before Louis. 

The work of Massillon generally judged, though according 
to Sainte-Beuve not wisely judged, to be his choicest, is con- 


Massillon. 149 





tained in that volume of his which goes by the name of 
“Le Petit Caréme ”—literally, “The Little Lent ”—a col- 
lection of sermons preached during a Lent before the king’s 
great-grandson and successor, youthful Louis XV. These ser- 
mons especially have given to their author a fame that is 
his by a title perhaps absolutely unique in literature. We 
know no other instance of a writer, limited in his production 
strictly to sermons, who holds his place in the first rank of 
authorship simply by virtue of supreme mastership in liter- 
ary style, 

Still, from the text of his printed discourses—admirable, 
exquisite, ideal compositions in point of form as these are— 
it will be found impossible to conceive adequately the living 
eloquence of Massillon. There are interesting traditions of 
the effects produced by particular passages of particular ser- 
mons of his. When Louis XIV. died, Massillon preached 
his funeral sermon. He began with that célebrated single 
sentence of exordium which, it is said, brought his whole 
audience, by instantaneous, simultaneous impulse, in a body 
to their feet. The modern reader will experience some diffi- 
culty in comprehending at once why that perfectly common- 
place-seeming expression of the preacher should have pro- 
duced an effect so powerful. The element of the opportune, 
the apposite, the fit, is always great part of the secret of elo- 
quence. Nothing more absolutely appropriate can be con- 
ceived than was the sentiment, the exclamation, with which 
Massillon opened that funeral sermon. The image and 
symbol of earthly greatness, in the person of Louis XIV., 
had been shattered under the touch of iconoclast death. 
“God only is great!” said the preacher; and all was said. 
Those four short words had uttered completely, and with a 
simplicity incapable of being surpassed, the thought that 
usurped every breast. It is not the surprise of some striking 
new thought that is the most eloquent thing. The most 
eloquent thing is the surprise of that one word, suddenly 
spoken, which completely expresses some thought, pres- 
ent already and uppermost, but silent till now, awaiting 


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expression, in a multitude of minds. This most eloquent 
thing it was which, from Massillon’s lips that day, moved his 
susceptible audience to rise, like one man, and bow in mute 
act of submission tothe truth of his words, The inventive 
and curious reader may exercise his ingenuity at leisure. He 
will strive in vain to conceive any other exordium than 
Massillon’s that would have matched the occasion presented. 

There is an admirable anecdote of the pulpit, which— 
though since often otherwise applied—had, perhaps, its first 
application to Massillon. Some one congratulating the orator, 
as he came down from his pulpit, on the eloquence of the 
sermon just preached, that wise self-knower fenced by re- 
plying, “Ah, the devil has already apprised me of that!” 
The recluse celibate preacher was one day asked whence he 
derived that marvelous knowledge which he displayed of 
the passions, the weaknesses, the follies, the sins, of human 
nature. “ From my own heart,” was his reply. Source suf- 
ficient, perhaps; but from the confessional, too, one may con- 
fidently add. 

There is probably no better brief, quotable passage to 
represent Massillon at his imaginative highest in eloquence, 
than that most celebrated one of all, occurring toward the 
close of his memorable sermon on the “ Fewness of the 
Elect.” The effect attending the delivery of this passage, 
on both of the two recorded occasions on which the sermon 
was preached, is reported to have been remarkable. The 
manner of the orator—downcast, as with the inward oppres- 
sion of the same solemnity that he, in speaking, cast like a 
spell on the audience—indefinitely heightened the magical 
power of the awful conception excited. Not Bourdaloue 
himself, with that preternatural skill of his to probe the con- 
science of man to its innermost secret, could have exceeded 
the heart-searching rigor with which, in the earlier part of 
the discourse, Massillon had put to the rack the quivering 
consciences of his hearers. The terrors of the Lord, the 
shadows of the world to come, were thus already on all 
hearts, So much as this, Bourdaloue, too, with his incom- 


Massillon. 151 





parable dialectic, could have accomplished. But there imme- 
diately follows a culmination in power, such as was distinctly 
beyond the height of Bourdaloue. Genius must be super- 
added to talent if you would have the supreme, either in 
poetry or in eloquence. There was an extreme point in 
Massillon’s discourses at which mere reason, having done, 
and done terribly, its utmost, was fain to confess that it 
could not go a single step farther. At that extreme point, 
suddenly, inexhaustible imagination took up the part of ex- 
hausted reason. Reason had made men afraid; imagination 
now appalled them, Massillon said: 


I confine myself to you, my brethren, who are gathered here. I speak 
no longer of the rest of mankind. I look at you as if you were the only 
ones on the earth; and here is the thought that seizes me, and that 
terrifies me. I make the supposition that this is your last hour, and the 
eud of the world; that the heavens are about to open above your heads, 
that Jesus Christ is to appear in his glory in the midst of this sanctuary: 
and that you are gathered here culy to wait for him, and as trembling 
criminals on whom is to be pronounced either a sentence of grace or a 
decree of eternal death. For, vainly do you flattery ourselves; you will 
die such in character as you are to-day, All those impulses toward 
change with which you amuse yourselves, you will amuse yourselves with 
them down to the bed of death. Such is the experience of all genera- 
tions. The only thing new you will then find in yourselves will be, per- 
haps, a reckoning a trifle larger than that which you would to-day have to 
render; and according to what you wculd be if you were this moment to 
be judged, you may almost determine what will befall you at the termi- 
nation of your life. 

Now I ask you, and I ask it smitten with terror, not separating in this 
matter my lot from yours, and pztting myself into the same frame of 
mind into which I desire you to come—I ask you, then, If Jesus Christ 
were to appear in this sanctuary, in the midst of this assembly, the most 
illustrious in the world, to pass judgment on us, to draw tle dread line of 
distinction between the goats and the sheep, do you believe that the ma- 
jority of all of us who are here would be set on his right hand? Doyou 
believe that things would even be equal? Nay, do you believe there 
would be found so many as the ten rigliteous men whom anciently the 
Lord could not find in five whole cities? I put the question to you, but 
you know not; I kncw not myself. Thou only, O my God, knowest 
those that belong to thee! But if we know not those who belong to him, 
at least we know that sinners do not belong to him, Now, of what 


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classes of persons do the professing Christians in this assembly consist ? 
Titles and dignities must be counted for naught; of these you shall be 
stripped before Jesus Christ. Who make up this assembly? Sinners, in 
great number, who do not wish to be converted; in still greater 
number, sinners who would like it, but who put off their conversion ; 
many others who would be converted, only to relapse into sin; finally, a 
multitude who think they have no need of conversion. You have thus 
made up the company of the reprobate. Cut off these four classes of 
sinners from this sacred assembly, for they will be be cut off from it at 
the great day! Stand forth now, ye righteous! where are you? Rem- 
nant of Israel, pass to the right hand! True wheat of Jesus Christ, dis- 
engage yourselves from this chaff, doomed to the fire! O God! where are 
thine elect? and what remains there for thy portion ? 

Brethren, our perdition is well nigh assured, and we do not give it a 
thought. Evenif in that dread separation which one day shall be made, 
there were to be but a single sinner out of this assembly found on the 
side of the reprobate, and if a voice from heaven should come to give us 
assurance of the fact in this sanctuary, without pointing out the per- 
son intended, who among us would not fear that he might himself be the 
wretch? Who among us would not at once recoil upon his conscience, 
to inquire whether his sins had not deserved that penalty? Who among 
us would not, seized with dismay, ask of Jesus Christ, as did once the 
apostles, ‘‘ Lord, isit I?” 


What is there wanting in such eloquence as the foregoing ? 
Wherein lies its deficiency of power to penetrate and sub- 
due? Voltaire avowed that he found the sermons of Mas- 
sillon to be among “ the most agreeable books we have in our 
language. I love,” he went on, “to have them read to me 
at table.” ‘There are things in Massillon that Voltaire should 
not have delighted to read, or to hear read—things that should 
have made him wince and revolt, if they did not make him 
yield and be converted. Was there fault in the preacher? 
Did he preach with professional, rather than with personal, 
zeal? Did his hearers feel themselves secretly acquitted by 
the man, at the self-same moment at which they were openly 
condemned by the preacher? It is impossible to say. - But 
Massillon’s virtue was not lofty and regal; however it may 
have been free from just reproach. He was somewhat too 
capable of compliance. He was made bishop of Clermont, 
and his promotion cost him the anguish of having to help 


Massillon. 153 


J 





consecrate a scandalously unfit candidate as archbishop of 
Cambray. Massillon’s, however, is a fair, if not an abso- 
lutely spotless, fame. Hierarch as he was, and orthodox 
Catholic, this most elegant of eloquent orators had a liberal 
strain in his blood which allied him politically with the 
‘philosophers ” of the time succeeding. He, with Fénelon, 
and perhaps with Racine, makes seem less abrupt the trans- 
ition in France from the age of absolutism to the age of re- 
volt and final revolution. There is distinct advance in 
Massillon, and advance more than is accounted for by his 
somewhat later time, toward the easier modern spirit in 
Church and in State, from the high, unbending austerity of 
that antique pontiff and minister, Bossuet. 


vy In dealing with SauRin we are irresistibly reminded of the 
train of historic misfortunes that age after age have visited 
France. It bears eloquent, if tragic testimony to the endur- 
ing noble qualities of the French people, that they have sur- 
vived so splendidly so much national suicide. What other 
great nation is there that has continued great and spilled so 
often her own best blood? The Revocation of the Edict of 
Nantes, with its sequel of frightful hemorrhage in the loss 
to France of her Huguenots, the guillotine of the Revolution, 
the decimations of Napoleon, the madness of the Franco- 
German war, the Commune! 
- To such reflections we are forced; for Jacques Saurin 
preached his great sermons in French as a compulsory exile 
from France. He had a year or two’s experience as French 
preacher in London ; but from his twenty-eighth year till he 
died at fifty-two he was pastor of the French church at The 
Hague in Holland. 

Saurin’s living renown was great; and his renown has 
never been less, though it has been less resounding, since he 
died. This is as it could not but be; for the reputation of 
Saurin as preacher rested from the first on solid foundations 
that were not to be shaken. If he had been a loyal Roman 


Catholic, he would have been twinned with Bossuet, whom 
1" 


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he somewhat resembles, in the acclamations of general fame. 
It is far more in name than in merit that Bossuet surpasses 
him. Bossuet’s quasi-pontifical relation to the Gallican 
Chureh indeed engaged him in various activities which 
seemed to display a talent in him correspondingly more 
various than that of Saurin, who remained almost exclusively 
a preacher. But the difference is probably a difference of 
fortune rather than a difference of original gift. The intel- 
lect that expresses itself in Saurin’s sermons is certainly a 
spacious intellect. Saurin is in mere intellect as distinctly 
“great” as is Bossuet. In imagination, however, that at- 
tribute of genius as distinguished from talent, to Bossuet 
we suppose must be accorded superiority over Saurin. 

Clearness, French clearness; order, French order; solidity 
of matter; sobriety of thought; soundness of doctrine; 
breadth of comprehension; sagacity and instructedness of 
interpretation; solemnity of inculcation; progress and 
cumulation of effect; strength and elevation, rather than 
grace and winningness, of style; address to the understand- 
ing, rather than appeal to the emotions; certitude of logic, 
rather than play of imagination; a theological, more than a 
practical, tendency of interest—such are the distinguishing 
characteristics of Saurin as preacher. 

Sermons are literary products in which change from fash- 
ion to fashion of thought and of form makes itself felt more 
than in almost any other kind of literature. The sermons of 
one age are generally doomed to be obsolete in the age next 
following. - But to this general rule Saurin’s sermons come 
near constituting an exception. They might, many of them, 
perhaps most of them, still be preached. This, certain pulpit 


plagiarists of a generation or two ago, are said to have learned. // 


The following extract will give our readers an idea how 
Saurin, toward the close of a discourse—having now done, for 
the occasion, with dispassionate argument—would follow up 
and press his hearer with deliberately vehement, unescapable 
oratoric harangue and appeal. His text is: ‘‘ Greater is he 
that isin you than he that is in the world.” Analyzing this, 


Saurin. 155 





he states thus his second head of discourse: “ Motives to 
virtue are superior to motives to vice.” 


What [under the first head] I affirmed of all known truth, that its shoe 
most hardened sinners cannot resist them if they attend to them; there i is 
no other way of becoming insensible to them than to turn the eyes away 
from them... . 

And where is the man so blinded as to digest the falsehoods which the 
motives to vice imply? Where is the wretch desperate one to reason 
in this manner: | 

“T love to be esteemed; I will, therefore, devote myself exclusively to 
acquiring the esteem of those men who, like me, will in a few days be 
devoured by worms, and whose ashes will in a few days, like my own, 
be mixed with the dust of the earth; but I will not take the least pains to 
obtain the approbation of those noble intelligences, of those sublime 
spirits, of those angels, of those seraphims, who are without ceasing 
around the throne of God; I will not take the least pains to have a share 
in those praises with which the great God will one day, in the sight of 
heaven and of earth, crown those who have been faithful to him. 

“T love glory; I will therefore apply myself exclusively to make the 
world say of me: That man has a taste quite exceptional in dress, his 
table is delicately served, there has never been either base blood or 
plebeian marriage in his family, nobody offends him with impunity, he 
permits none but a respectful approach; but I will never take the least 
pains to make envy itself say of me: That man fears God, he prefers his 
duty above all other things, he thinks there is more magnanimity in for- 
giving an affront than in revenging it, in being holy than in being noble 
in the world’s esteem, and so on. 

“Tam very fond of pleasure; I will therefore give myself wholly up to 
gratify my senses, to lead a voluptuous life, to have the spectacle follow 
the feast, debauchery the spectacle, and so on; but I will never take the 
least pains to secure that fullness of joy which is at God’s right hand, that 
river of pleasure whereof he-gives to drink to those who put their trust 
under the shadow of his wings. 

“T hate constraint and trouble ; I will apply myself therefore exclusively 
to escape the idea of emotions of penitence, above all, the idea of prison 
cells, of exile, of the rack, of the stake; but I will brave the chains of 
darkness with their weight, the demons with their fury, hell with its tor- 
ments, eternity with its horrors. I have made my decision; I consent to 
curse eternally the day of my birth, to look eternally upon annihilation as 
a blessing beyond price, to seek eternally for death without being able to 
find it, to vomit eternally blasphemies against my Creator, to hear 

. eternally the howlings of the damned, to how! eternally with them, and to 


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be eternally, like them, the object of that sentence, Depart from me, ye 
cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” Once 
more, Where is the wretch desperate enough to digest these propositions ? 
Yet these are the motives to vice. 


To illustrate the point-blank directness, the almost excess- 
ive fidelity, amounting to something very like truculence, 
with which Saurin would train his guns and fire his broad- 
sides into the faces and eyes of his hearers, let the following, 
our final citation, serve; we quote from the conclusion to a 
powerful sermon on infidelity: 


Let us here put a period to this discourse. We-turn to you, my breth- 
ren, .. . You congratulate yourselves for the most part,. . . on detest- 
ing infidelity, and on respecting religion. But shall we tell you, my 
brethren, how odious soever the men are whom we have just been describ- 
ing, we know of others more odious still. There is a restriction in the judg- 
ment which the prophet pronounces on the first, when he calls them, in 
the words of my text, the most foolish and the most brutish among 
the people; and there are men who surpass them in brutality and in 
extravagance. 

Do not think we exceed the truth of the matter, or that we are endeay- 
oring to obtain your attention by paradoxes. In all good faith, I speak 
as I think, I find more refinement, and even, if I may venture to say so, 
a less fund of corruption in men who, having resolved to abandon them- 
selves to the torrent of their passions, strive to persuade themselves, 
either that there is no God in heaven, or that he pays no attention to 
what men do on earth; than in those who, believing in a God who sees 
them and heeds them, live as if they believed nothing of the sort. Infi- 
dels were not able to support, in their excesses, the idea of a benefactor 
outraged, of a Supreme Judge provoked to anger, of an eternal salvation 
neglected, of a hell braved, a lake burning with fire and brimstone, and 
smoke ascending up for ever and ever. It was necessary, in order to give 
free course to their passions it was necessary for them to put far away from 
their eyes these terrifying objects, and to efface from their minds these 
overwhelming truths. 

But you, you who believe that there is a God in heaven, you whi be- 
lieve yourselves under his eye, and who insult him without remorse and 
without repentance, you who believe that this God holds the thunderbolt 
in his hand to crush sinners, and who live in sin, you who believe that 
there are devouring flames and chains of darkness, and who brave their 
horrors, you who believe the soul immortal, and who concern yourselves 
only with time; what forehead, what forehead of brass, is the one you wear ! 


Saurin, 157 





One thing in just qualification of the praise due to Saurin 
for his pulpit eloquence requires to be added. When he at- 
tempts the figure of apostrophe, as he frequently does, per- 
sonifying inanimate objects and addressing them in the way 
of oratoric appeal, he is very apt to produce a frigid effect, 
the absolute opposite of genuine eloquence. Nothing but 
imagination white-hot with passion justifies, in the use of 
the orator, the expedient of such apostrophe as this which 
Saurin affects. With Saurin, both the necessary imagination 
and the necessary passion seem somehow to fail; and he 
possessed neither the perfect judgment nor the perfect taste, 
nor yet the fine feeling, that might have chastised the 
audacities to which his ambition incited him, His rhetor- 
ically bold things he did in a certain cold-blooded way; so 
that, with him, what should have been the climax of oratoric 
effectiveness, or else not been at all, produces sometimes in- 
stead a reaction and recoil of disappointment. We thus 
indicate a shortcoming in Saurin which deposes this great 
preacher, one is compelled to admit, despite his remarkable 
merits, from the first into the second rank of orators. 

Both the Roman Catholic and the Protestant lines of 
French pulpit eloquence are continued down to our own day. 
Lacordaire, Pére Felix, Pére Hyacinthe, of the Catholics, 
Frédéric Monod, Adolph Monod, Coquerel, of the Protest- 
ants, are names worthy to be here set down; and it may be 
added that Eugéne Bersier, deceased in 1889, challenges on 
the whole not unequal comparison with the men treated in 
this chapter for pulpit power. He may be described asa 
kind of nineteenth-century Bossuet, tempered to Massillon, 
among French Protestant preachers. 

But there is no Louis XIV. now to cast over any great 
preachers, even of the Roman Catholics, the illusive, facti- 
tious, reflected glory of the person and court, the sentence 
and seal, of the “most illustrious sovereign of the world.” 

The seventeenth-century sacred eloquence of France, the 
sacred eloquence, that is to say, of the “ great” French age, will 
always remain a unique tradition in the history of the pulpit, 


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XIII. 
FENELON. 
1651-1715. 


Ir Bossuet is to Frenchmen a synonym for sublimity, no 
less to them is Fénelon a synonym for saintliness. From 
the French point of view, one might say, “ the sublime Bos- 
suet,” “the saintly Fénelon,” somewhat as one says, “the 
learned Selden,” “the judicious Hooker,” It is as much a 
French delight to idealize Fénelon an archangel Raphael, 
affable and mild, as it is to glorify Bossuet a Michael in 
majesty and power. 

But saintliness of character was in Fénelon commended 
to the world by equal charm of person and of genius. The 
words of Milton describing Eve might be applied, with no 
change but that of gender, to Fénelon, both the exterior 
and the interior man: 


Grace was in all liis steps, heaven in his eye, 
In every gesture dignity and love. 


The consent is general among those who saw Fénelon, and 
have left behind them their testimony, that alike in per- 
son, in character, and in genius, he was such as we thus de- 
scribe him. 

Twice, in his youth, he was smitten to the heart with a 
feeling of vocation to be a missionary. Both times he was 
thwarted by the intervention of friends. The second time, 
he wrote disclosing his half-romantic aspiration in a glowing 
letter of confidence and friendship to Bossuet, his senior 
by many years, but not yet become famous. Young Féne- 
lon’s friend Bossuet was destined later to prove a bitter an- 
tagonist, almost a personal foe. 

Until he was forty-two years old, Frangois Fénelon lived 


Feénelon. 159 





in comparative retirement, nourishing his genius with study, 
with contemplation, with choice society. He experimented 
in writing verse. Not succeeding to his mind, he turned to 
prose composition, and, leading the way, in a new species of 
literature, for Rousseau, for Chateaubriand, for Lamartine, 
and for many others, to follow, went on writing what, in 
ceasing to be verse, did not cease to be poetry. 

The great world will presently involve Fénelon in the 
currents of history. Louis XIV., grown old, and become 
as selfishly greedy. now of personal salvation as all his life 
he had been selfishly greedy of personal glory, seeks that ob- 
ject of his soul by serving the Church in the wholesale con- 
version of Protestants. He revokes the Edict of Nantes, 
which had secured religious toleration for the realm, and pro- 
ceeds to dragoon the Huguenots into conformity with the 
Roman Catholic Church. The reaction in public sentiment 
against such rigors grew a cry that had to be silenced. Fén- 
elon was selected to visit the heretic provinces, and win them 
to willing submission. He stipulated that every form of coer- 
cion should cease, and went to conquer all with love. His 
success was remarkable. But not even Fénelon quite escaped 
the infection of violent zeal for the Church. It seems not 
to be given to any man to rise wholly superior to the spirit 
of the world in which he lives. - 

The luster of Fénelon’s name, luminous from the triumphs 
of his mission among the Protestants, was sufficient to justify 
the choice of this man, a man both by nature and by cult- 
ure so ideally formed for the office as was he, to be tutor to 
the heir prospective of the French monarchy. The Duke of 
Burgundy, grandson to Louis XIV., was accordingly put 
under the charge of Fénelon to be trained for future king- 
ship. Never, probably, in the history of mankind, has there 
occurred a case in which the victory of a teacher could be 
more illustrious than actually was the victory of Fénelon as 
teacher to this scion of the house of Bourbon. We shall be 
giving our readers a relishable taste of St. Simon, the cele- 
brated memoir-writer of the age of Louis XIV., if out of 


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the portrait in words, drawn by him from life, of Fénelon’s 
princely pupil, we transfer here a few strong lines to our 
pages. St. Simon says: 


In the first place, it must be said that Monseigneur the Duke of 
- Burgundy had by nature a most formidable disposition. He was pas- 
sionate to the extent of wishing to dash to pieces his clocks when they 
struck the hour which called him to what he did not like, and of flying 
into the utmost rage against the rain if it interfered with what he 
wanted to do. Resistance threw him into paroxysms of fury. I speak 
of what I have often witnessed in his early youth. Moreover, an ungov- 
ernable impulse drove him into whatever indulgence, bodily or mental, 
was forbidden him. His sarcasm was so much the more cruel, as it was 
witty and piquant, and as it seized with precision upon every point open 
to ridicule. All this was sharpened by a vivacity of body and of mind 
that proceeded to the degree of impetuosity, and that during his early days 
“never permitted him to learn any thing except by doing two things 
at once. Every form of pleasure he loved with a violent avidity, and all 
this with a pride and a haughtiness impossible to describe; dangerously 
wise, moreover, to judge of men and things, and to detect the weak point 
in a train of reasoning, and to reason himself more cogently and more 
profoundly than his teachers. But at the same time, as soon as his 
'. passion was spent, reason resumed her sway; he felt his faults, he acknowl- 
edged them, and sometimes with such chagrin that his rage was re- 
‘kindled. A mind lively, alert, penetrating, stiffening itself against 
obstacles, excelling literally in every thing. The prodigy is, that ina 
very short time piety and grace made of him a different being, and 
transformed faults so numerous and so formidable into virtues exactly 
opposite. 


St. Simon attributes to Fénelon “every virtue under 
heaven”; but his way was to give to God rather than to 
man the praise of the remarkable change which, during Fén- 
elon’s charge of the Duke of Burgundy, came over the char- 
acter of the prince. . 

The grandfather survived the grandson; and it was never 
put to the stern proof of historical experiment whether Fén- 
elon had indeed turned out one Bourbon entirely different 
from all the other members, earlier or later, of that royal line. 

Before, however, the Duke of Burgundy was thus snatched 
away from the perilous prospect of a throne, his beloved 
teacher was parted from him, not indeed by death, but by 


Fenelon. 161 





what, to the archbishop’s susceptible and suffering spirit, was 
worse than death, by “disgrace.” The disgrace was such 
as has ever since engaged for its subject the interest, the 
sympathy, and the admiration of mankind. Fénelon lost the 
royal favor. That was all—for the present; but that was 
much. He was banished from court, and he ceased to be 
preceptor to the Duke of Burgundy. The king, in signal 
severity, used his uwn hand to strike Fénelon’s name from 
the list of the household of his grandson and heir. The 
archbishop—for Fénelon had previously been made arch- 
bishop of Cambray—returned into his diocese as into an 
exile, But his cup of humiliation was by no means full. 
Bossuet will stain his own glory by following his exiled 
former pupil and friend, with hostile pontifical rage, to crush 
him in his retreat. 

The occasion was a woman, a woman with the charm of 
genius and of exalted character, a Christian, a saint, but a 
mystic—it was Madame Guyon. Madame Guyon taught 
that it was possible to love God for himself alone, purely 
and disinterestedly, Fénelon received the doctrine, and 
Madame Guyon was patronized by Madame de Maintenon. 
Bossuet scented heresy. He was too much a “natural man” 
to understand Madame Guyon. The king was like the 
prelate, his minister, in spirit, and in consequent incapacity. 
It was resolved that Fénelon must condemn Madame Guyon. 
But Fénelon would not. He was very gentle, very concilia- 
_tory, but in fine he would not. Controversy ensued, haughty, 
magisterial, domineering, on the part of Bossuet; on the 
part of Fénelon, meek, docile, suasive. The world wondered, 
and watched the duel. Fénelon finally did what king 
James’s translators misleadingly make Job wish that his ad- 
versary had done—he wrote a book, “'The Maxims of the 
Saints.” In this book, he sought to show that the accepted 
and even canonized teachers of the Church had taught the 
doctrine for which, in his own case and in the case of Madame 
Guyon, condemnation was now invoked. Bossuet was pope 
at Paris: and he, in full presence, denounced to the monarch 


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the heresy of Fénelon. At this moment of crisis for Féne- 
lon, it happened that news was brought him of the burning 
of his mansion at Cambray with all his books and manu- 
scripts. It will always be remembered that Fénelon only 
said : “It is betterso than if it had been the cottage of a poor 
laboring-man.” 

Madame de Maintenon, till now his friend, with perfect 
frigid facility separated herself from the side of the accused. 
The controversy was carried to Rome, where at length 
Fénelon’s book was condemned—condemned mildly, but 
condemned. The pope is said to have made the remark that 
Fénelon erred by loving God too much, and Fénelon’s an- 
tagonists by loving their fellow-man too little. Fénelon 
bowed to the authority of the Church, and meekly in his own 
cathedral confessed his error. It was a logical thing for him, 
as loyal Catholic, to do ; and he did it with a beautiful grace 
of humility. The Protestant spirit, however, rebels on his 
behalf, and finds it difficult even to admire the manner in 
which was done by him a thing that seems so unfit to have 
been done by him at all. Bossuet did not long survive his 
inglorious triumph over so much sanctity of personal charac- 
ter, over so much difficult and beautiful height of doctrinal 
and practical instruction to virtue. Fénelon seems to have 
been reported as preaching a funeral sermon on the dead prel- 
ate. “I have wept and prayed,” he wrote to a friend, “for 
this old instructor of my youth ; but it is not true that I cele- 
brated his obsequies in my cathedral, and preached his fun- 
eral sermon. Such affectation, you know, is foreign to my 
nature.” The iron must have gone deep, to wring from that 
gentle bosom even’ so much cry as this of wounded feeling. 

It is hard to tell what might now have befallen Fénelon, in 
the way of good fortune—he might even have been recalled 
to court, and re-installed in his office of tutor to the prince— 
had not a sinister incident, not to have been looked for, at an 
inopportune moment occurred. The ‘'‘Telemachus” appeared 
in print, and kindled a sudden flame of popular feeling, which 
instantly spread in universal conflagration over the face of 


Fenelon. 163 





Europe. This composition of Fénelon’s the author had writ- 
ten to convey, under a form of quasi-poetical fiction, lessons 
of wisdom in government to the mind of his royal pupil. 
The existence of the manuscript book would seem to have 
been intended to be a secret from the king— indeed, from 
almost every one, except the pupil himself for whose use it 
was made. But a copyist proved false to his trust, and fur- 
nished a copy of “'Telemachus” to a printer in Holland, who 
lost no time in publishing a book so likely to sell. But the 
sale of the book surpassed all expectation. Holland not only, 
but Belgium, Germany, France, and England multiplied 
copies as fast as they could; still Europe could not get copies 
as fast as she wanted them. 

The secret of such popularity did not lie simply in the 
literary merits of “Telemachus.” It lay more in a certain 
interpretation that the book was supposed to bear. “Tele- 
machus” was understood to be a covert criticism of Louis 
XIV., and of the principle of absolute monarchy embodied 
in him. This imputed intention of the book could not fail 
to become known at Versailles. The result, of course, was 
fatal, and finally fatal, to the prospects, whatever these may 
have been, of Fénelon’s restoration to favor at court. The 
archbishop thenceforward was left to do in comparative 
obscurity the duties of his episcopal office in his diocese of 
Cambray. He devoted himself, with exemplary and touch- 
ing fidelity, to the interests of his flock, loving them and 
loved by them, until he died. It was an entirely worthy and 
adequate employment of his powers. The only abatement 
needful from the praise to be bestowed upon his behavior in 
this pastoral relation is that he suffered himself sometimes 
to think of his position as one of “ disgrace.” His reputation 
meantime for holy character and conduct was European. 
His palace at Cambray, hospitably open ever to the resort of 
suffering need, indeed almost his whole diocese, lying on the 
frontier of France, was by mutual consent of contending 
armies, treated in war as a kind of mutual inviolable ground, 
invested with privilege of sanctuary. It was an instructive 


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example of the serene and beautiful ascendency sometimes 
divinely accorded to illustrious personal goodness. 

There had been a moment, even subsequently to the affair 
of the “'Telemachus” publication, when it looked as if, after 
long. delay, a complete worldly triumph for Fénelon was 
assured, and was near. The father of the Duke of Bur- 
gundy died, and nothing then seemed to stand between Féne- 
lon’s late pupil and the throne, nothing but the precarious 
life of an aged monarch, visibly approaching the end. The 
Duke of Burgundy, through all changes, had remained — 
unchangingly fast in his affectionate loyalty to Fénelon. 
Sternly forbidden, by the jealous and watchful king, his 
grandfather, to communicate with his old teacher, he yet 
had found means to send to Fénelon, from time to time, 
reassuring signals of his trust and love. Fénelon was now, 
in all eyes, the predestined prime minister of a new reign 
- about to commence. Through devoted friends of his own, 
- near to the person of the prince at court, Fénelon sent 
minutes of advice to his pupil, which outlined a whole benefi- 
cent policy of liberal monarchical rule. A new day seemed 
dawning for France. The horrible reaction of the Regency 
and of Louis XV. might, perhaps, have been averted, and, with 
that spared to France, the revolution itself might have been 
accomplished without the Revolution. But it was not to be. 
The Duke of Burgundy first buried his wife, and then, 
within a few days, followed her himself to the grave. He 
died sincerely rejoicing that God had taken him away from 
the dread responsibility of reigning. 

“ All my ties are broken,” mourned Fénelon; “there is no 
longer any thing to bind me to the earth.” In truth, the 
teacher survived his pupil but two or three years. When he 
died, his sovereign, gloomy with well-grounded apprehen- 
sion for the future of his realm, said, with tardy revival of 
recognition for the virtue that had perished in Fénelon: 
“T[ere was a man who could have served us well under the 
disasters by which my kingdom is about to be assailed.” 

Fénelon’s literary productions are various; but they all 


Fenelon. 165 





have the common character of being works written for the 
sake of life, rather than for the sake of literature. They 
were inspired each by a practical purpose, and adapted each 
to a particular occasion. His treatise on the “ Education of 
Girls” was written for the use of a mother who desired 
instruction on the topic from Fénelon. His argument on the 
“ Being of a God” was prepared as a duty of his preceptorship 
to the prince. But the one book of Fénelon, which was an 
historical event when it appeared, and which stands an 
indestructible classic in literature, is the “'Telemachus.” It . 
remains for us briefly to give some idea of this book. 

The first thing to be said is, that those are mistaken who 
suppose themselves to have obtained a true idea of “'Telem- 
achus” from having partly read it at school, as an exercise 
in French. The essence of the work lies beyond those few 
opening pages to which the exploration of school-boys and 
school-girls is generally limited. This masterpiece of Féne- 
lon is much more than a charming piece of romantic and 
sentimental poetry in prose. It is a kind of epic, indeed, 
like the “‘ Odyssey,” only written in rhythmical prose instead 
of rhythmical verse; but, unlike the “ Odyssey,” itis an idyl- 
lic epic written with an ulterior purpose of moral and politi- 
eal didactics. It was designed as a manual of instruction— 
instruction made delightful to a prince—to inculcate the 
duties incumbent on a sovereign. 

Telemachus, our readers will remember, was the son of 
Ulysses. Fénelon’s story relates the adventures encountered 
by Telemachus in search for his father, so long delayed on 
his return from Troy to Ithaca. Telemachus is imagined by 
Fénelon to be attended by Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, 
masked from his recognition, as well as from the recognition 
of others, under the form of an old man. Minerva, of course, 
constantly imparts the wisest counsel to young Telemachus, 
who has his weaknesses, as had the young Duke of Bur- 
gundy, but who is essentially well-disposed, as Fénelon 
hoped his royal pupil would finally turn out to be. Nothing 
ean exceed the-urbanity and grace with which the delicate 


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business is conducted by Fénelon, of teaching a bad prince, 
with a very bad example set him by his grandfather, to be a 
good king. The style in which the story is told, and in which 
the advice is insinuated, is exquisite, is beyond praise. The 
“soft delicious ” stream of sound runs on, as from a fountain, 
and like “linked sweetness long drawn out.” Never had prose 
a flow of melody more luscious. It is perpetual ravishment to 
the ear. The invention, too, of incident is fruitful, while the 
landscape and coloring are magical for beauty. We give a 
few extracts, to be read with that application in mind to Louis 
XIV., and to the state of France, which, when the book was 
first printed, gave it such an exciting interest in the eyes of 
Europe. Telemachus, after the manner of Adneas to Queen 
Dido, is relating to the goddess Calypso, into whose island 
he has come, the adventures that have previously befallen 
him. He says that he, with Mentor (Minerva in disguise), 
found himself in Crete. Mentor had been there before, and 
was ready to tell Telemachus all about the country. Tele- 
machus was naturally interested to learn respecting the Cretan 
monarchy. - Mentor, he says, informed him as follows: 


The king’s authority over the subject is absolute, but the authority of 
the law is absolute over him. His power to do good is unlimited, but he 
is restrained from doing evil. The laws have put the people into his 
hands, as the most valuable deposit, upon condition that he shall treat 
them as his children. It is the intent of the law that the wisdom and 
equity of one man shall be the happiness of many, and not that the 
wretchedness and slavery of many should gratify the pride and luxury of 
one. The king ought to possess nothing more than the subject, except 
what is necessary to alleviate the fatigue of his station, and impress upon 
the minds of the people a reverence of that authority by which the laws 
are executed. Moreover, the king should indulge himself less, as well in 
ease as in pleasure, and should be less disposed to the pompand the pride 
of life than any other man. He ought not to be distinguished from the 
rest of mankind by the greatness of his wealth, or the vanity of his en- 
joyments, but by superior wisdom, more heroic virtue, and more splendid 
glory. Abroad ho ought to be the defender of his country, by command- 
ing her armies; and at home the judge of his people, distributing justice 
among them, improving their morals, and increasing their felicity. It is 
not for himself that the gods have intrusted him with royalty, He is ex- 


Fenelon. 167 





alted above individuals only that he may be the servant of the people. 
To the public he owes all his time, all his attention, and all his love; he 
deserves dignity only in proportion as he gives up private enjoyments for 
the public good. 


_ Pretty sound doctrine, the foregoing, on the subject of 
the duties devolving on a king. The “ paternal” idea, to 
be sure, of government is in it; but there is the idea, too, of 
limited or constitutional monarchy. The spirit of just and 
liberal political thought had, it seems, not been wholly ex- 
tinguished, even at the court, by that oppression of mind— 
an oppression seldom, if ever, in human history exceeded— 
which was enforced under the unmitigated absolutism of 
Louis XIV. The literature that, with Montesquieu, Vol- 
taire, Rousseau, the Encyclopedists, prepared the Revolution, 
had already begun virtually to be written when Fénelon 
wrote his “Telemachus.” It is easy to see why the fame of 
Fénelon should by exception have been dear even to the hot- 
test infidel haters of that ecclesiastical hierarchy to which 
the archbishop of Cambray himself belonged. This lover of 
liberty, this gentle rebuker of kings, was of the freethinkers, 
at least in the sympathy of political thought. Nay, the 
Revolution itself is foreshown in a remarkable glimpse of 
conjectural prophecy which occurs in the ‘'Telemachus.” 
Idomeneus is a headstrong king, whom Mentor is made by 
the author to reprove and instruct for the Duke of Burgun- 
dy’s benefit. To Idomeneus—a character taken, and not 
unplausibly taken, to have been suggested to Fénelon by 
the example of Louis XIV.—to this imaginary counterpart 
of the reigning monarch of France, Mentor holds the follow- 
ing language. How could the sequel of Bourbon despotism 
in France—a sequel suspended now for a time, but two or 
three generations later to be dreadfully visited on the heirs 
of Louis XIV.—have been more fully foreshadowed? The 
“ Telemachus ” ; 


Remember that the sovereign who is most absolute is always least 
powerful; he seizes upon all, and his grasp is ruin. He is, indeed, the 
sole proprietor of whatever his state contains; but, for that reason, his 


~ 


168 Classic French Course in English, 





state contains nothing of value; the fields are uncultivated, and al- 
most a desert; the towns lose some of their few inhabitants every day ; 
and trade every day declines. The king, who must cease to be a king 
when he ceases to have subjects, and who is great only in virtue of his 
people, is himself insensibly losing his character and his power, as the 
number of his people, from whom alone both are derived, insensibly 
diminishes. His dominions are at length exhausted of money and of men: 
the loss of men is the greatest and the most irreparable he can sustain. 
Absolute power degrades every subject to a slave. The tyrant is flattered 
even to an appearance of adoration, and every one trembles at the glance 
of his eye; but, at the least revolt, this enormous power perishes by 
its own excess. It derived no strength from the love of the people ; it wearied - 
and provoked all that it could reach, and rendered every individual of the 
state impatient of its continuance. At the first stroke of opposition, the 
idol is overturned, broken to pieces, and trodden under foot. Contempt, 
hatred, fear, resentment, distrust, and every other passion of the soul 
unite against so hateful.a despotism. The king who, in his vain pros- 
perity, found no man bold enough to tell him the truth, in his adversity 
finds no man kind enough to excuse his faults, or to defend him against 
his enemies. 


So much is perhaps enough to indicate the political drift 
of the “Telemachus.” That drift is, indeed, observable 
everywhere throughout the book. 

We conclude our exhibition of this fine classic, by letting 
Fénelon appear more purely now in his character as dreamer 
and poet. Young Prince Telemachus has, Ulysses-like, and 
Aineas-like, his descent into Hades. ‘This incident affords 
Fénelon opportunity to exercise his best powers of awful and 
of lovely imagining and describing. Christian ideas are, in 
this episode of the “ Telemachus,” superinduced upon pagan, 
after a manner hard, perhaps, to reconcile with the verisim- 
ilitude required by art, but at least productive of very noble 
and very beautiful results. First, one glimpse of Tartarus 
as conceived by Fénelon. It is the spectacle of kings who 
on earth abused their power that Telemachus is beholding: 


Telemachus observed the countenance of these criminals to be pale and 
ghastly, strongly expressive of the torment they suffered at the heart. 
They looked inward with a self-abhorrence now inseparable from their 
existence. Their crimes themselves had become their punishment, and 
it was not necessary that greater should be inflicted. They haunted them 

‘ 


Fenelon. 169 





like hideous specters, and continually started up before them in all their 
enormity. They wished for asecond death, that might separate them from 
these ministers of vengeance, as the first had separated their spirits from 
the body—a death that might at once extinguish all consciousness and 
sensibility. They called upon the depths of hell to hide them from the 
persecuting beams of truth, in impenetrable darkness: but they are re- 
served for the cup of vengeance, which, though they drink of it forever, 
shall be ever full. The truth, from which they fled, has overtaken them, 
an invincible and unrelenting enemy. The ray which once might have 
illuminated them, like the mild radiance of the day, now pierces them 
like lightning—-a fierce and fatal fire, that, without injury to the external 
parts, infixesa burning torment at the heart. By truth, now an avenging 
flame, the very soul is melted like metal in a furnace; it dissolves all, 
but destroys nothing; it disunites the first elements of life, yet the suf- 
ferer can never die. He is, as it were, divided against himself, without 
rest and without comfort; animated by no vital principle, but the rage 
that kindles at his own misconduct, and the dreadful madness that results 
from despair. 


If the “perpetual feast of nectar’d sweets” that the 
* Telemachus ” affords is felt at times to be almost cloying, 
it is not, as our readers have now seen, for want of occa- 
sional contrasts of a bitterness sufficiently mordant and dras- 
tic. But the didactic purpose is never lost sight of by the 
author. Here is an aspect of the Elysium found by Tele- 
machus. How could any thing be more delectably con- 
ceived and described? ‘The translator, Dr. Hawkesworth, is 
animated to an English style that befits the sweetness of his 
original. The “Telemachus: ” 


In this place resided all the good kings who had wisely governed man- * 
kind from the beginning of time. They were separated from the rest of 
the just; for, as wicked princes suffer more dreadful punishment than 
other offenders in Tartarus, so good kings enjoy infinitely greater felicity 
than other lovers of virtue, in the fields of Elysium. 

Telemachus advanced toward these kings, whom he found in groves of 
delightful fragrance, reclining upon the downy turf, where the flowers 
and herbage were perpetually renewed. A thousand rills wandered 
through these scenes of delight, and refreshed the soil with a gentle and 
unpolluted wave; the song of innumerable birds echoed in the groves. 
Spring strewed the ground with her flowers, while at the same time au- 
tumn loaded the trees with her fruit. In this place the burning heat of 
the dog-star was never felt, and the stormy north was forbidden to scatter 

8 


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over it the frosts of winter. Neither War that thirsts for blood, nor Envy 
that bites with an envenomed tooth, like the vipers that are wreatled 
around her arms and fostered in her bosom, nor Jealousy, nor Distrust, nor 
Fears, nor vain Desires, invade these sacred domains of peace. The day is 
here without end, and the shades of night areunknown. Here the bodies 
of the blessed are clothed with a pure and lambent light, as with a garment. 
The light does not resemble that vouchsafed to mortals upon earth, wh'ch 
is rather darkness visible ; it is rather a celestial glory than a light—an 
emanation that penetrates the grossest body with more subtilty than the 
rays of the sun penetrate the purest crystal, which rather strengthens 
than dazzles the sight, and diffuses tlirough the soul a serenity which no- 
language can express. By this ethereal essence the blessed are sustained 
in everlasting life; it pervades them; it is incorporated with them, as 
food with the mortal body; they see it, they feel it, they breathe it, and 
it produces in them an inexhaustible source of serenity and joy. Itis a 
fountain of delight, in which they are absorbed as fishes are absorbed in 
the sea; they wish for nothing, and, having nothing, they possess all 
things. This celestial light satiates the hunger of the soul; every desire 
<3 precluded; and they have a fulness of joy which sets them above all 
that mortals seek with such restless ardor, to fill the vacuity that aches 
forever in their breast. All the delightful objects that surround them are 
disregarded; for their felicity springs up within, and, being perfect, cau 

- derive nothing from without. So the gods, satiated with nectar and am- 

’ brosia, disdain, as gross and impure, all the dainties of the most luxuri- 
ous table upon earth. From these seats of tranquillity all evils fly far 
away; death, disease, poverty, pain, regret, remorse, fear, even hope— 

_ which is sometimes not less painful than fear itself —animosity, disgust, 
and resentment can never enter there. 


The leaden good sense of Louis XIV. pronounced Fénelon 
the “most chimerical” man in France. The founder ofthe 
kingdom of heaven would have been a dreamer, to this most 
worldly-minded of “ Most Christian” monarchs. Bossuet, 
who, about to die, read something of Fénelon’s “'Telema- 
chus,” said it was a book hardly serious enough for a cler- 
gyman to write. A more serious book, whether its purpose 
be regarded, or its undoubted actual influence in molding 
the character of a prospective ruler of France, was not writ- 
ten by any clergyman of Fénelon’s or Bossuet’s time. 

Fénelon was an eloquent preacher as well as an elegant 
writer. His influence exerted in both the two functions, that 
of the writer and that of the preacher, was powerfully felt in 


' Fénelon. E agit 171 





favor of the freedom of nature in style as against the conven- 
tionality of culture and art. He insensibly helped on that re- 
form from a too rigid classicism, which in our day we have seen 
pushed to its extreme in the exaggerations of romanticism. 
Few wiser words have ever been spoken on the subject of ora- 
tory than are to be found in his “ Dialogues on Eloquence.” 

Disappearing space warns us that we must perforce let pass 
from presence the gracious spirit of Fénelon. But we should 
wrong this most engaging of prelates, and we should wrong 
our readers, not still to represent a side of his character and 
of his literary work, a very important side, that thus far has 
been only hinted at in incidental allusion. We mean that 
distinctively religious side which belongs alike to the man 
and to the writer. 

Fénelon, as priest, was something more than professional 
preacher, pastor, theologian. He was a devout soul, the sub- 
ject of a transcendent Christian experience, even verging on 
mysticism. In his capacity of spiritual director, he wrote 
what are called “ spiritual letters,” many of which survive, 
included in his published works. These have a very pecul- 
iarly ripe, sweet, chaste, St. John-like quality of tone, and 
they are written in a pure, simple, transparent style, that 
reads as if the thought found its own form of expression 
without the smallest trouble on the part of the writer. The 
style, in fact, is absolute perfection ; you cannot tell the mere 
. literal truth about it and not thus seem to be exaggerating 
its merit. Even in translation some charm of such ultimate 
felicity in it cannot fail to be felt. 

Almost any “spiritual” letter that we happen first to strike 
will be as good as any other, to illustrate the rare culture of 
heart, the deep spiritual wisdom, the perfect urbanity in 
manner, reconciled with the perfect frankness in fact, and 
the circumfluent grace of literary style, with which this 
heavenly-minded man conducted, through correspondence, his 
cure of individual souls. We pluck out a few specimen 
sentences from two different letters, and present them de- 
tached, without setting of context: 


172 Classic French Course in English. 





Consent to be humiliated; silence and peace in humiliation are the true 
good of the soul. One might be tempted to speak humbly, and one might 
find a thousand fine pretexts for doing so; but 1t is still better to be silent 
humbly. The humility which still speaks is still to be suspected; in 
speaking, self-love consoles itself a little. 


What now follows, ending our extracts from Fénelon’s 
writings, we give, not only for its own value, but for the 
light it throws on the charming humility of the author: 


It has seemed to me that you needed to enlarge your heart in the matter 
of the defects of others. . 

Perfection bears with ease the imperfection of others; it becomes all 
things to all men. One must grow accustomed to the idea of the grossest 
defects in good souls. . .. 

I beg of you more than ever not to spare me in respect of my defects. 
Should you believe t!:at you see one that I perhaps have not, that will be 
no great misfortune. If vour hints wourd me, that sensitiveness will 
show me that you have touched the quick; thus you will always have 
conferred on me a great benefit in disciplining me to be little, and in ac- 
customing me to take reproof. I ouglt to be more abased tliat another 
in proportion as I am more exalted by my position, and as God requires 
of me more complete death to all. I need such simplicity, and I hope that, 
far from weakening, it will strengthen our union of heart. 


It is impossible not to associate with Fénelon, in the 
thought of this spiritual life of his, explored and purified so 
deep, that remarkable woman, Madame Guyon, to whom in 
certain religious relations the great and gentle archbishop 
ostensibly, and perhaps really, submitted himself, as one who 
learns to one who teaches. Her exaltation—how far real, and 
how far illusory only, let us leave it for the All-knower to 
judge—made Madame Guyon easily equal to the seemingly 
audacious part of spiritual guide to a man who was at once 
one of the most illustrious writers, one of the most highly 
placed Church dignitaries, and one of the saintliest Christians 
in Europe. It is undoubtedly true that the sage can learn 
more from the fool than the fool can from the sage; and 
therefore if it could be proved to have been indeed the fact 
that, of the two, Fénelon was the greater gainer from the re- 
lation existing between himself and Madame Guyon, that 


Feénelon. 173 





might well be only because he was already a wiser person 
than she. 

We have no room here to show Madame Guyon by any of 
her extant letters addressed to Fénelon; but we may take the 
present occasion to introduce at least a few stanzas from one 
of those sweet little Christian poems of hers which a spirit 
not far alien from Fénelon’s own, we mean William Cowper, 
has put for us into fairly happy English expression. Madame 
Guyon spent ten years in prison—for teaching that souls 
should love God unselfishly, for his own sake only !—and it is 
in prison that this meekly triumphing song of hers must 
be imagined as sung by the author. It bears the title, “The 
Soul that Loves God Finds Him Everywhere.” 


To me remains nor place nor time; 
My country is in every clime; 

I can be calm and free from care 
On any shore, since God is there. 


While place we seek, or place we shun, 
The soul finds happiness in none; 

But, with a God to guide our way, 

Tis equal joy to go or stay. 

Could I be cast where thou art not, 
That were indeed a dreadful lot; 


But regions none remote I call, 
Secure of finding God in all. 


Ah, then! to his embrace repair ; 
My soul, thou art no stranger there; 
There love divine shall be thy guard, 
And peace and safety thy reward. 


French literature, unfortunately, is on the whole such in 
character as to need all that it can show to be cast into the 
scale of moral elevation and purity. Fénelon alone—he was 
not alone, as the instance of Madame Guyon has just freshly 
been reminding us—but Fénelon alone were enough, in quality 
supported by quantity, not indeed to overcome, but to go far 
toward overcoming, the perverse inclination of the balance. 


174 Classic French Course in English. 





XIV. 
LE SAGE. 
1668-1747. 


_ Le Sage was a fruitful father of literary product, but it is 
as the author of “Gil Blas” that he is entitled to his place 
in these pages. “The Adventures of Gil Blas” justly enjoys 
the distinction of being among the few works of fiction that 
are read everywhere, and everywhere acknowledged to be 
masterpieces in literature. Lapse of time and change of 
fashion seem not -to tend at all toward making “ Gil Blas” 
obsolete. With every generation of men it takes as it were 
a fresh lease of inexhaustible immortality. 

Of course, there must be something elemental in the 
quality. and merit of a book, especially a book of fiction, 
concerning which this can truly be said. A novel “ Gil 
Blas” is generally called. The name is hardly descriptive. 
Le Sage’s masterpiece is rather a book of human nature and 
of human life. It constitutes already, embraced within the 
compass of a single work, that which it was the ambition of 
the novelist Balzac to achieve in an Alexandrian library of 
fiction; “Gil Blas” is the whole “comedy”. of man. The 
breadth of it isenormous. There is hardly any thing lacking 
to it that is human—unless it be some truly noble human 
character, some truly noble human action. 

We spoke of it not amiss, when we used Balzac’s half- 
cynical word and called it the comedy of man. Le Sage in- 
voluntarily reveals his own limitation in the fact that he has 
converted into comedy the whole mingled drama of man’s 
earthly condition. Within his proper individual bounds, 
this man’s dimensions are so large that he has been not un- 
fitly styled Shakespearean. But Shakespeare exceeds Le 
Sage in measure by a whole hemisphere. Shakespeare knows 
how to be serious, to be tragic ; as Le Sage does not. Matter 


Le Sage. 175 





of tragedy indeed abounds in “ Gil Blas,” but it is all treated 
lightly, in the manner of comedy. You are allured, in 
reading, to laugh, when, if you return at all upon yourself, 
you are conscious you ought rather to weep. Le Sage is the 
antithesis of Rousseau, of Chateaubriand, of Lamartine, of 
George Sand—writers who know as little of laughter as Le 
Sage does of tears. 

But it should at once, and strongly, be said that Le Sage 
isnocynic. It is not a sneering, but a smiling, mask that 
he wears. The smile is of a worldly-wisdom not ill-pleased 
with itself, and therefore not ill-pleased with the world which 
it rallies. It is a genial smile. But for all that, if you are 
yourself at bottom a serious man, you are disturbed at last. 
You are vexed to find yourself incessantly brought to smile 
at what you know ought to move your shame, your indigna- 
tion, or your grief. The moral temper which Le Sage ex- 
hibits and which he engenders is not the “enthusiasm of 
humanity.” It is less the temper to help your fellow-men 
than the temper to profit the most that. you can by their 
weaknesses, by their follies, and even by their crimes. Le 
Sage’s hero, “Gil Blas,” goes through a series of “ advent- 
ures,” in which nearly every human sin is committed 
by him and by his fellows, either unblushingly, or, if 
with any show of compunction at all, then with such 
show of compunction as is almost worse than perfect in- 
difference would be. The book is not in intention immoral, 
but only unmoral. It may well be questioned whether in 
effect it be not the more immoral for this very character in 
it. The abounding gay animal spirits of the narrative go 
frisking along as if let loose in a lucky world where moral 
distinctions were things that did not exist; the real world 
indeed, only with the deepest reality of all left out ! 

Verisimilitude seems hardly sought. The situations often 
waver on the edge of the ludicrously farcical. The tenor of 
the production stops barely short of sheer extravaganza. 
There is no unity, progressiveness, culmination of plot. The 
whole book is a mere concatenation, scarcely concatenation, 


176 Classie French Course in English. 





succession, say rather, of “adventures,” any one of which is 
nearly as good a starting-point for the reader as any other 
would be. 

The scene of the story and the local color are all Spanish. 
Le Sage’s previous experience of travel in Spain, as well as 
his long occupation in translating from the Spanish into 
French, probably influenced him to this choice of medium for 
his masterpiece; which, by the way, it cost the author inter- 
vals of time covering twenty-two years to bring to its com- 
pletion. The fact of its Spanish character gave color to the 
charge, deemed now to have been exploded, that “ Gil Blas ” 
was plagiarized by Le Sage from a Spanish original. It may 
be added that laying the scene and action of his story in 
Spain left Le Sage the more free to satirize, as he undoubt- 
edly does, certain persons and certain manners belonging to 
his own country, France. 

Of Alain René Le Sage, the man, there need little be said. 
He was a successful writer of comedies for the stage. Of 
these the most were ephemeral productions. Two, however, 
and one especially, the ‘‘' Turcaret,” have the honor of rank- 
ing,in French literature, next to the very highest in their 
kind, the comedies of Moliére. Never rich, Le Sage was 
always independent in spirit. The story is told of him 
that, arriving once unavoidably late at a noble mansion 
where he had made an appointment to read one of his 
own productions, he was reproached by the distinguished - 
hostess for making the company lose an hour in waiting ; 
whereupon he replied: “I give the company a chance to 
recover their lost hour,” and refusing to be placated bowed 
himself out. 

Smollet, the celebrated English novelist—and historian so- 
called—has translated “Gil Blas.” We make use of his 
translation in presenting our extracts from this novel to our 
readers. There are two passages, both deservedly famous, 
which will admirably exemplify Le Sage at his best; one of 
these is the immortal episode concerning the illustrious phy- 
sician, Doctor Sangrado, and the other is the instructive re- 


Le Suge. 177 





lation of Gil Blas’s experience in discharging the office of 
what one might call literary valet and critic to an arch- 
bishop. 

First we introduce Doctor Sangrado. 

‘Gil Blas is’ at this time in the Spanish town of Valladolid 
serving an ecclesiastic in the capacity of lackey. His 
master, falling sick, sends for a physician. Gil Blas—the 
novel is autobiographic in form—shall tell his own story: 


I therefore went in search of Dr. Sangrado, and brought him to the 
house. ... The licentiate having promised to obey him in all things, San- 
grado sent me for a surgeon, whom he named, and ordered him to take from 
my master six good porringers of blood, as the first effort, in order to supply 
the want of perspiration. Then he said to the surgeon: “ Master Martin 
Omnez, return in three hours and take as much more; and repeat the 
same evacuation to-morrow. It is a gross error to think that blood is 
necessary for the preservation of life; a patient cannot be blooded too 
much; for as he is obliged to perform no considerable motion or exercise, 
but just only to breathe, he has no more occasion for blood than a man 
who is asleep—life, in both, consisting in the pulse and respiration only.” 
The doctor having ordered frequent and copious evacuations of this kind, 
he told us that we must make the canon drink warm water incessantly ; 
assuring us that water, drank in abundance, was the true specific in ail 
distempers whatever. ... We set about warming water with all des- 
patch; and as the physician had recommended to us, above all things, not 
to be too sparing of it, we made my master drink for the first dose two or 
three pints, at as many draughts. An hour after we repeated it, and 
returning to the charge, from time to time, overwhelmed his stomach 
with a deluge of water, the surgeon seconding us, on the other hand, by 
the quantity of blood which he drew from him. In less than two days 
the old canon was reduced to extremity. 


Blood-letting, as an expedient of the healing art, has hap- 
pily gone out of fashion ; but Dr. Sangrado’s other master 
secret, the therapeutic drinking of hot water, has been reha- 
bilitated in our days. We sincerely hope that none of our 
hot-water-drinking readers will let Le Sage laugh them out 
of countenance in holding to their habit—if it really does 
them good ! 

Gil Blas is promoted to be servant, and then professional 
assistant, to the famous Dr. Sangrado. Gil Blas and the 

g* 


178 Classic French Course in English. 





doctor’s maid were warned by their master against eating 
much, but, now, however, Gil Blas shall himself again re- 
sume the part of narrator: 


He allowed us, by way of recompense, to drink as much water as we 
could swallow: far from restricting us in this particular, he would some- 
times say, “ Drink, my children; health consists in the suppleness and 
humectation of the parts: drink water in great abundance: it is an 
universal menstruum that dissolves all kinds of salt. When the course 
of the blood is too languid, this accelerates its motion; and when too 
rapid, checks its impetuosity.” ... “If thou feelest in thyself,” said 
he to me, ‘any reluctance to simple element, there are innocent aids 
in plenty that will support thy stomach against the insipid taste of 
water; sage, for example, and balm will give it an admirable flavor; and 
an infusion of corn-poppy, gillyflower, and rosemary, will render it still 
more delicious.” 

Notwithstanding all he could say in praise of water, and the excellent 
beverages he taught me to compose, I drank of it with such moderation, 
that perceiving my temperance, he said: “ Why, truly, Gil Blas, I am not 
at all surprised that thou dost not enjoy good health. Thou dost not 
drink enough, my friend. Water tiken in small quantities serves only 
to disentangle the particles of the bile, and give them more activity; 
whereas tliey should be drowned in a copious dilution: don’t be afraid, 
my child, that abundance of water will weaken and relax thy stomach: 
lay aside that panic fear which perhaps thou entertainest of plentiful 
drinking.” 


Gil Glas, discouraged, was about to leave Dr. Sangrado’s 
service, when that distinguished physician said to him—we 
take up the text of the story once more ; 


“T have a regard for thee, and without further delay will make thy 
fortune. ... Ispare thee the trouble of studying pharmacy, anatomy, 
botany, and physic: know, my friend, all that is required is to bleed the 
paticnts and make them drink warm water. This is the secret of curing all 
the distempers incident to man.” . . . I assured him that I would follow 
his maxims as long as I lived, even if they should be contrary to those 
of Ilippocrates. But this assurance was not altogether sincere; for I dis- 
approved of his opinion with regard to water, and resolved to driuk wine 
every day, when I went out to visit my patients. 


This resolution Gil Blas carried out, and, returning home 
drunk in consequence, gave Dr. Sangrado an artfully height- 
ened account of a scuffle he had had with a rival physician of 


Le Sage. 179 





his master named Cuchillo, Let Gil Blas pursue the nar- 
rative : 


“Thou hast done well; Gil Blas,” said Dr. Sangrado, “in defending the 
honor of our remedies against that little abortion of the faculty. He af- 
firms, then, that aqueo's draughts are improper for the dropsy ! Ignorant 
wretch! I maintain, I do, that a dropsical patient cannot drink too much.” 
. . - He perceived that I drank more water that evening than usual, the 
wine having made me very thirsty, . . . and said, with a smile, “I see, 
Gil Blas, thou hast no longer an aversion to water. Heaven be praised! 
thou drinkest it now like nectar.” . . . “Sir,” I replied, “ there is a time 
for all things: I would not at present give a pint of water for an hogs- 
head of wine.” The doctor, charmed with this answer, did not neglect 
such a fair opportunity of extolling the excellence of water. ... “There 
are still a few,” he exclaimed, “ who, like thou and I, drink nothing but 
water; and, who, as a preservative from, or cure of all distempers, trust 
to hot water unboiled: for I have observed that boiled water is more 
heavy and less agreeable to the stomach.” 

. . . T entered into the doctor’s sentiments, inveighed against the use 
of wine, and lamented that mankind had contracted a taste for such a per- 
nicions liquor. Then (as my thirst was not sufficiently quenched) I filled 
a large goblet with water, and having swallowed long draughts of it: 
“Come, sir,” said I to my master, ‘let us regale ourselves with this be- 
nevolent liquor.” . . . He applauded my zeal, and during a whole quarter 
of an hour exhorted me to drink nothing but water. In order to famil- 
iarize myself to this prescription, I promised to swallow a great quantity 
every evening; and that I might the more easily perform my promise, 
went to bed with a resolution of going to the tavern every day. 


In passing from the humor of Le Sage’s Dr. Sangrado, we 
cannot refrain from exhorting the reader not to miss that 
‘refinement about water made hot without actually boiling. 
The present writer seems to himself to have encountered the 
same delicacy of hot-water-drinking in his own personal ob- 
servation of those who now practice this method of health 
or of cure. 

A later fortune of Gil Blas, in his long career of ex- 
tremely various “adventures,” shaken from change to change 
as in a kaleidoscope, was to fall into the service of an arch- 
bishop, by whom he was soon advanced to a post of confi- 
dential favor. Gil Blas became in fact the archbishop’s 
“ euide, philosopher, and friend,” in the very important mat- 


* 


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ter of that high dignitary’s literary and historical reputation. 
This happened through Gil Blas’s felicity in copying out with 
judicious caligraphy—a caligraphy such as seemed to their 
author to commend those productions in some fit proportion 
to their worth—the venerable archbishop’s homilies. Gil 
Blas thus relates the immediate, and then the more remote, 
result of his submitting to the archbishop his maiden essay 
in copy-hand reproduction of that prelate’s pulpit rhetoric: 


““Good heaven!” cried he in a transport, when he had surveyed all the 
sheets of my copy, “ was ever anything seen so correct? You transcribe 
so well that you must certainly understand grammar. Tell me ingen- 
uously, my friend, have you found nothing that shocked you in writing 
it over? Some neglect, perhaps, in the style, or improper term?” ‘0, 
sir,” answered I, with an air of modesty, “I am not learned enough to 
make critical observations; and if I was, I am persuaded that the works 
of your grace would escape my censure.” The prelate smiled at my reply; 
and, though he said nothing, discovered through all his piety, that he was 
a downright author. 

By this kind of flattery, I entirely gained his good graces, beeame more 
and more dear to him every day. . . . One evenivg he repeated in his 
closet, when I was present, with great enthusiasm, an homily which he 
intended to pronounce the next day in the cathedral; and, not satisfied 
with asking my opinion of it in general, obliged me to singlé out the par- 
ticular passages which I most admired. I had the good luck to mention 
those that he himself looked upon to be the best, his own favorite mor- 
ceaus: by which means I passed, in his judgment, for a man who had a 
delicate knowledge of the true beauties of a work. ‘This is,” er-ed he, 
‘what is called having taste and sentiment: well, friend, I assure thee 
thou hast not got Boeotian ears.” Ina word, he was so well satisfied 
with me, that he pronounced with some vivacity, ‘‘Gil Blas, henceforth 
give thyself no uneasiness about thy fortune: I undertake to make it ex- 
tremely agreeable; I love thee; and, as a proof of my affection, make 
thee my confidant.” 

I no sooner heard these words than I fell at his grace’s feet, quite pene- 
trated with gratitude ; I heartily embraced his bandy legs, and looked 
upon myself as a man on the high way to wealth and opulence. “ Yes, my 
child,” resumed the archbishop, whose discourse had been interrupted by 
my prostration, “thou shalt be the repository of my most secret thoughts, 
Listen with attention to what I am going to say: my chief pleasure con- 
sists in preaching; the Lord gives a blessing to my homilies; they touch 
the hearts of sinners, make them seriously reflect on their conduct, and 
have recourse to repeutance. . . . I will confess my weakness; I propose 


Le Sage. 181 





to myself another reward, a reward which the delicacy of my virtue re- 
proaches me with in vain! I mean the esteem that the world shows 
for fine polished writing. The honor of being reckoned a perfect orator 
has charmed my imagination; my performances are thought equally 
strong and delicate; but I would, of all things, avoid the fault of good 
authors who write too long, and retire without forfeiting the least tittle 
of my reputation. Wherefore, my dear Gil Blas,” continued the prelate, 
“one thing that I exact of thy zeal is, whenever thou shalt perceive my 
pen smack of old age, and my genius flag, don’t fail to advertise me of 
it: for I don’t trust to my own judgment, which may be seduced by self- 
love.” . . . “ Thank heaven, sir,” said T, ‘that period is far off: besides, 
a genius like that of your grace-will preserve its vigor much better than 
any other; or, to speak more justly, will be always the same. I look 
upon you as another Cardinal Ximenes, whose superior genius, instead of 
being weakened by age, seemed to receive new strength from it.” ‘No 
flattery, friend,” said he, interrupting me. ‘I know I am liable to sink all 
at once: people at my age begin to feel infirmities, and the infirmities of 
the body often affect the understanding. I repeat it to thee again, Gil 
Blas, as soon as thou shalt judge mine in the least impaired, be sure to 
give me notice; and be not afraid of speaking freely and sincerely, for I 
shall receive thy advice as a mark of thy affection. Besides, thy interest 
is concerned; if, unhappily for thee, it should come to my ears that the 
public says my discourses-have no longer their wonted force, and that it 
is high time for me to repose myself, I frankly declare that thou shalt 
lose my friendship, as well as the fortune I have promised, Such will be 
the fruit of thy foolish reserve!” 


Gil Blas was destined soon to be put to the extreme ‘proof 
of his fidelity. Himself must tell how: 


In the very zenith of my favor we had a hot alarm in the episcopal 
palace ; the archbishop was seized with a fit of the apoplexy ; he was, how- 
ever, succored immediately, and such salutary medicines administered 
that in a few days his health was re-established; but his understanding 
had received a rude shock, which I plainly perceived in the very next 
discourse which he composed. I did not, however, find the difference 
between this and the rest so sensible as to make me conclude that the 
orator began to flag, and waited for another homily to fix my resolution. 
This, indeed, was quite decisive; sometimes the good old prelate repeated 
the same thing over and over, sometimes rose too high or sunk too low; 
it was a vague discourse, the rhetoric of an old professor, a mere 
capucinade. [The word, “capucinade,” satirizes the Capuchin monks. ] 

I was not the only person who took notice of this. The greatest part 
of the audience when he pronounced it, as if they had been also hired to 


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¢ 


examine it, said softly to one another, “This sermon smells strong of the 
apoplexy.” Come, master homily-critic, said I then to myself, prepare to 
do your office ; you see that his grace begins to fail; itis your duty to give 
him notice of it, not only as the depository of his thoughts, but, likewise, 
lest some one of his friends should be free enough with him to prevent 
you; in that case you know what would happen: your name would be 
erased from his last will. ... 

After these reflections I made others of a quite contrary nature. To 
give the notice in question, seemed a delicate point. I imagined that it 
might be ill-received by an author like him, conceited of his own works; 
but, rejecting this suggestion, I represented to myself that he could not 
possibly take it amiss after having exacted it of me in so pressing a 
manner. Add to this that I depended upon my being able to mention it 
with address, and make him swallow the pill without reluctance. Ina 
word, finding that I ran a greater risk in keeping silence than in breaking 
it, I determined to speak. 

The only thing that embarrassed me now was how to break the ice. 
Luckily the orator himself extricated me from that difficulty by asking 
what people said of him, and if they were satisfied with his last discourse. 
I answered that his homilies were always admired, but in my opinion the 
last had not succeeded so well as the rest in affecting the audience- 
“Tlow, friend!” replied he with astonishment, “has it met with any 
Aristarchus?” “No, sir,” said I, ‘by no means; such works as yours 
are not to be criticised; everybody is charmed with them, Nevertheless, 
since you have laid your injunctions upon me to be free and sincere, I will 
take the liberty to tell you that your last discourse, in my judgment, has 
not altogether the energy of your other performances. Are younot ofthe 
same opinion? ” : 

My master grew pale at these words, and said with a forced smile, ‘So, 
then, Mr. Gil Blas, this piece is not to your taste?” “I don’t say so, 
sir,” cried I, quite disconcerted, ‘I think it excellent, although a little in- 
ferior to your other works.” “TI understand you,” he replied, “you think 
I flag, don’t you? Come, be plain; you believe itis time for me to think 
of retiring.” “I should not have been so bold,” said I, “as to speak so 
freely if your grace liad not commanded me: I do no more, therefore, than 
obey you, and I most humbly beg tliat you will not be offended at my 
freedom.” ‘ God forbid,” cried he, with precipitation, “God forbid that I 
should find fault with it. In so doing 1 should be very unjust. I don’t 
at all take it ill that you speak your sentiment; it is your sentiment only 
that I find bad. I have been most egregiously deceived in your narrow 
understanding.” 

Though I was disconcerted, I endeavored to find some mitigation in order 
to set things to rights again; but how is it possible to appease an incensed 
author, one especially who has been accustomed to hear himself praised? 


Le Sage. | 183 





“Say no more, my child,” said he, “you are yet too raw to make proper 
distinctions. Know that I never composed a better homily than that which 
you disapprove, for my genius, thank heaven, hath as yet lost nothing of 
its vigor. Henceforth I will makea better choice of a confidant and keep 
one of greater ability than you.- Go,” added he, pushing me by the 
shoulders out of his closet, “go tell my treasurer to give you a hundred 
ducats, and may heaven conduct you with that sum. Adieu, Mr. Gil 
Blas, I wish you all manner of prosperity, witli a little more taste.” 


It would be hard, we think, to overmatch anywhere in 
literature the shrewd but genial satire, the quiet, effective 
comedy, of the foregoing. How deep it gently goes, probing 
and searching into the secret springs of our common human 
nature! The cool, the frontless calculation of self-interest on 
Gil Blas’s part throughout the whole course of his conduct of 
the relation between himself and the archbishop~is perfectly 
characteristic of the impudent easy-heartedness everywhere 
displayed of this conscienceless adventurer. It illustrates 
the consummate art of the author that the whole is so managed 
that, while you do not sympathize with his hero, ycu still are 
by no means forced to feel unplesantly offended at him. This 
is a great feat of lullaby to the conscience of the reader ; for 
the character of the work is such that if, in perusing it, you 
should throughout keep vigilantly obeying the wholesome 
safeguard injunction of the apostle, “ Abhor that which is 
evil,” you would be so busy doing the duty of abhorring as 
seriously to interfere with your enjoyment of the comedy. To 
get the pleasure or the profit, and at the same time leave the 
taint, that is the problem often in studying the masterpieces 
of literature. As generally, so in the case of “ Gil Blas,” it 
is a problem perhaps best to be solved by being still more 
intent on leaving the taint than on getting the pleasure or 
the profit. 

On the whole, the reading of “ Gil Blas” entire is a task 
or a diversion that may safely in most cases be postponed to 
the leisure of late life. The whole is such, or is not so 
good, as the part that has here been shown. It is an 
instance in which the building is very fairly represented 


184 Classie French Course in English. 





by a single specimen brick, Multiply what you have seen by 
the necessary factor, and you have the total product with lit- 
tle or no loss. 

It ought to be added that “ Gil Blas,” as in loc:l color and 
in what might be styled medium not French at all, is also in 
general character the least French of French productions. It 
seems almost as if expressly written to be part of what Goethe 
taught his disciples to look for, namely, a “ world-literature.” 
“Gil Blas,” though French in form, is in essence French only 
because it is human, And for the same reason it is of every 
other nation as well. It possesses, therefore, as French 
literature a unique and, so to speak, paradoxical importance 
in not being French literature ; it is, in fact, perhaps quite 
the only French book that is less national than universal, 


XV. 
MONTESQUIEU: 1689-1755; DE TOCQUEVILLE: 1805-1859. 


To Montesquieu belongs the glory of being the founder, 
or inventor, of the philosophy of history. Bossuet might 
dispute this palm with him ; but Bossuet, in his “ Discourse 
on Universal History,” only exemplified the principle which 
it was left to Montesquieu afterward more consciously to 
develop. 

Three books, still living, are associated with the name of 
Montesquieu—“ The Persian Letters,” “The Greatness and 
the Decline of the Romans,” and “The Spirit of Laws,” 
“The Persian Letters” are a series of epistles purporting to 
be written by a Persian sojourning in Paris and observing 
the manners and morals of the peoplearound him, The idea 
is ingenious; though the ingenuity, we suppose, was not 
original with Montesquieu. Such letters afford the writer of 
them an admirable advantage for telling satire on contempo- 
rary follies. This production cf Montesquieu became the 
suggestive example to Goldsmith for his “Citizen of the 


Montesquieu. 185 





World; or, Letters of a Chinese Philosopher.” We shall have 
here no room for illustrative citations from Montesquieu’s 
‘Persian Letters.” 

The second work, that on the “ Greatness and the Decline 
of the Romans,” is less a history than a series of essays on the 
history of Rome. It is brilliant, striking, suggestive. It 
aims to be philosophical rather than historical. It deals in 
bold generalizations. The spirit of it is, perhaps, too con- 
stantly and too profoundly hostile to the Romans, Some- 
thing of the ancient Gallic enmity—as if a derivation from 
that last and noblest of the Gauls, Vercingetorix—seems to 
animate the Frenchman in discussing the character and the ca- 
reer of the great conquering nation of antiquity. The critical 
element is the element chiefly wanting to make Montesquieu’s 
work equal to the demands of modern historical scholarship. 
Montesquieu was, however, a full worthy forerunner of the 
philosophical historians of to-day. We give a single extract 
in illustration—an extract condensed from the chapter in 
which the author analyzes and expounds the foreign policy 
of the Romans. The generalizations are bold and brilliant, 
—too bold, probably, for strict critical truth. (We use, for 
our extract, the recent translation by Mr. Jehu Baker, who 
enriches his volume with original notes of no little interest 
and value.) Montesquieu : 


This body [the Roman Senate] erected itself into a tribunal for the 
judgment of all peoples, and at the end of every war it decided upon the 
punishment and the recompenses which it conceived each to be entitled 
to. It took away parts of the lands of the conquered states, in order to 
bestow them upon the allies of Rome, thus accomplishing two objects at 
once—aitaching to Rome those kings of whom she had little to fear and 
much to hope, and weakening those of Whom she had little to hope and 
all to fear. , 

Allies were employed to make war upon an enemy, but the destroyers 
were at once destroyed in their turn. Philip was beaten with the half of 
the tolians, who were immediately afterward annihilated for having 
joined themselves to Antiochus. Antiochus was beaten with the help of 
the Rhodians, who, after having received signal rewards, were humiliated 
forever, under the pretext that they had requested that peace might be 
made with Perseus. 


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When they had many enemies on hand at the same time, they accorded 
a truce to the weakest, which considered itself happy in obtaming such a 
respite, counting it for much to be able to secure a postponement of its ruin. 

When they were engaged in a great war, the Senate affected to ignore 
all sorts of injuries, and silently awaited the arrival of the proper time for 
punishment; when, if it saw that only some individuals were culpable, it 
refused to punish them, choosing rather to hold the entire nation as 
criminal, and thus reserve to itself a useful vengeance. 

As they inflicted inconceivable evils upon their euemies, there were not 
many leagues formed against them; for those who were most distant 
from danger were not willing to draw nearer to it. The consequence of 
this was, that they were rarely attacked; whilst, on the other hand, they 
constantly made war at such time, in such manner, and against such 
peoples, as suited their convenience; and, among the many nations which 
they assailed, there were very few that would not have submitted to every 
species of injury at their hands if they had been willing to leave them in 

* peace, 

It being their custom to speak always as masters, the ambassadors whom 
they sent to nations which had not yet felt their power were certain to be 
insulted; and this was an infallible pretext fora new war. 

As they never made peace in good faith, and as, with the design of 
universal conquest, their treaties were, properly speaking, only suspen- 
sions of war, they always put conditions in them which began the ruin of 
the states which accepted them. They either provided that the garrisons 
of strong places should be withdrawn, or that the number of troops should 
be limited, or that the horses or the elephants of the vanquished party 
should be delivered over to themselves; and if the defeated people was - 
powerful on sea, they compelled it to burn its vessels, and sometimes to — 
remove, and occupy a place of habitation farther inland, 

After having destroyed the armies of a prince, they ruined his finances by 
excessive taxes, or by the imposition of a tribute under the pretext of re- 
quiring him to pay the expenses of the war—a new species of tyranny, 
which forced the vanquished sovereign to oppress his own subjects, and 
thus to alienate their affection. 

When they granted peace to a king, they took some of his brothers or 
children as hostages. This gave them the means of troubling his king- 
dom at their pleasure. If they held the nearest heir, they intimidated the 
possessor; if only a prince of a remote degree, they used him to stir up 
revolts against the legitimate ruler. 

Whenever any people or prince withdrew their obedience from thieir 
sovereign, they immediately accorded to them the title of allies of the Ro- 
man people, and thus rendered them sacred and inviolable; so that there 
was no king, however great he might be, who would for a moment be 
sure of his subjects, or even of his family. 


Montesquicu. 187 





Although the title of Roman ally was a species of servitude, it wes, 
nevertheless, very much sought after; for the possession of this title made 
it certain that the recipients of it would receive injuries from the Romanus 
only, and there was ground for the hope that this class of injuries would 
be rendered less grievous than they would otherwise be. 

Thus, there was no service which nations and kings were not ready to 
perform, nor any humiliation which they did not submit to, in order to 
obtain this distinction. ... 

These customs were not merely some particular facts which hap- 
pened at hazard. They were permanently established priuciples, as may 
be readily seen; for the maxims which the Romans acted upon against 
the greatest powers were precisely those which they had employed in 
the beginning of their career against the small cities which surrounded 
them. ... 

But nothing served Rome more effectually than the respect which she 
inspired among all nations. Slre immediately reduced kings to silence, 
and rendered them as dumb. With the latter, it was not a mere question 
of the degree of their power; their very persons were attacked. Torisk 
a war with Rome was to expose themselves to captivity, to death, and to 
the infamy of a triumph. Thus it was that kings, who lived in pomp 
and luxury, did not dare to look with steady eyes upon the Roman people, 
and, losing courage, they hoped, by their patience and their obsequious- 
ness, to obtain some postponement of the calamities with which they were 
menaced. 


The “Spirit of Laws” is probably to be considered the 
masterpiece of Montesquieu. It is our duty, however, to say 
that this work is quite differently estimated by different au- 
thorities. By some, it is praised in terms of the highest sd- 
miration, as a great achievement in wide and wise political 
or juridical philosophy. By others, it is dismissed very 
lightly, as the ambitious, or, rather, pretentious, effort of a 
superficial man, a showy mere sciolist. 

The philosophical aim and ambition of the author at once 
appear in the inquiry which he institutes for the three sev- 
eral animating principles of the several forms of government 
respectively distinguishel by him; namely, democracy (or 
republicanism), monarchy, and despotism. What these three 
principles are will be seen from the following statement : 
“As virtue is necessary in a republic, and in a monarchy 
honor, so fear is necessary in a despotic government.” The 


188 Classic French Coursein English. 





meaning is that in republics virtue possessed by the citizens 
is the spring of national prosperity ; that under a monarchy 
the-desire of preferment at the hands of the sovereign is what 
quickens men to perform services to the State ; that despot- 
ism thrives by fear inspired in the breasts of those subject to 
its sway. 

To illustrate the freely discursive character of the work, 
we give the whole of chapter sixteen—there are chapters still 
shorter—in Book VIL: 

AN EXCELLENT CUSTOM OF THE SAMNITES. 


The Samnites had a custom which in so small a republic, and especially 
in their situation, must have been productive of admirable effects. ~The 
young people were all convened in one place and their conduct was exam- 
ined. He that was declared the best-of tle whole assembly had leave 
given him to take which girl he pleased for his wife; the second best 
chose after him, and so on. Admirable institution! The only recom- 
mendation that young men could have on this occasion was their virtne 
and the service done their country. He who had the greatest share of 
these endowmeuts chose which girl he liked out of the whole nation. Love, 
beauty, chastity, virtue, birth, and even wealth itself, were ‘all, in some 
measure, the dowry of virtue. A nobler and grander recompense, less 
chargeable to a petty state and more capable of influencing both sexes, 
could scarce be imagined. 

The Samnites were descended from the Lacedemonians; and Plato, 
whose institutes are only an improvement of those of Lycurgus, enacted 
nearly the same law. 


The relation of the foregoing chapter to the subject indi- 
cated in the title of the book is sufficiently obscure and re- 
mote for a work like this, purporting to be philosophical. 
What relation exists seems to be found in the fact that the 
custom described tends to produce that popular virtue by 
which republics flourish, But the information, at all events, 
is curious and interesting. 

The following paragraphs, taken from the second chapter 
of Book XIV.,contain in germa large part of the philos- 
ophy underlying M. Taine’s essays on the history of literature : 


OF THE DIFFERENCE OF MEN IV DIFFERENT CLIMATES, 


A cold air constringes the extremities of the external fibers of the body ; 
this increases their elasticity, and favors the return of the blood from the 


Montesquieu. 189 


_— 





extreme parts to the heart. It contracts those very fibers; consequently 
it increases also their force. On the contrary, a warm air relaxes and 
lengihens the extremes of the fibers; of course it diminishes their 
force and elasticity. 

People are therefore more vigorous in cold climates. Here the action 
of the heart and the reaction of the extremities of the fibers are better 
performed, the temperature of the humors is greater, the blood moves 
freer toward the heart, and reciprocally the heart has more power. This 
superiority of strength must produce various effects; for instance, a 
greater boldness—that is, more courage; a greater sense of superiority— 
that is, less desire of revenge; a greater opinion of security—that is, 
more frankness, less suspicion, policy, and cunning. In short, this must 
be productive of very different tempers. Put a man into a close, warm 
place, aud for the reasons above given he will feel a great faintness. If 
under this circumstance you propose a bold enterprise to him, I believe 
you will find him very little disposed towards it; his present weakness 
will throw him into a despondency; he will be afraid of every thing, be- 
ing in a state of total incapacity. The inhabitants of warm countries are, 
like old men, timorous; the people in cold countries are, like young men, 
brave. 


In the following extract, from chapter five, Book X-XIV., 
the climatic theory is again applied, this time to the matter 
of religion, in a style that makes one think of Buckle’s 
“History of Civilization”: 

When the Christian religion, two centuries ago, became unhappilly di- 
vided into Catholic and Protestant, the people of the north embraced the 
Protestant, and those south adhered still to the Catholic. } 

The reason is plain: the people of the north have, and will forever 
have, a spirit of liberty and independence, which the people of the south 
have not; and therefore a religion which has no visible head is more 
agreeable to the independency of the climate than that which has one. 


Climate is a “ great matter” with Montesquieu. In treat- 
ing of the subject of a State changing its religion, he says : 


The ancient religion is connected with the constitution of the kingdom, 
and the new one is not; the former agrees with the climate, and very 
often the new one is opposite to it. 


For the Christian religion, Montesquieu professes profound 
respect—rather as a pagan political philosopher might do, 
than as one intimately acquainted with it by a personal ex- 


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perience of his own. His spirit, however, is humane and lib- 
eral. It is the spirit of Montaigne, it isthe spirit of Voltaire, 
speaking in the idiom of this different man, and of this dif- 
ferent man as influenced by his different circumstances. 
Montesquieu had had practical proof of the importance to 
himself of not offending the dominant hierarchy. 

On the whole, concerning Montesquieu it may justly be 
said, that of all political philosophers, he, if not the pro- 
foundext; is at least one of the most interesting; if not the 
most accurate and critical, at least one of the most brilliant 
and suggestive. 

As to Montesquieu the man, it is perhaps sufficient to say 
that he seems to have been a-very good type of the French 
gentleman of quality. An interesting story told by Sainte- 
Beuve reveals, if true, a side at once attractive and repellent 
of his personal character.. Montesquieu at Marseilles em- 
ployed a young boatman, whose manner and speech indicated 
more cultivation than was to have been looked for in one 
plying his vocation. The philosopher learned his history. 
The youth’s father was at the time a captive in one of the 
Barbary States, and this son of his was now working to earn 
money for his ransom. The stranger listened apparently 
unmoved, and went his way. Some mouths later, home 
came the father, released he knew not how, to his surprised 
and overjoyed family. The son guessed the secret, and, 
meeting Montesquieu a year or so after in Marseilles, threw 
himself in grateful tears at his feet, begged the generous 
benefactor to reveal his name and to come and see the family 
he had blessed. Montesquieu, calmly expressing himself 
ignorant of the whole business, actually shook the young 
fellow off, and turned away without betraying the least emo- 
tion. It was not till after the cold-blooded philanthropist’s 
death that the fact came out. 

A tranquil, happy temperament was Montesquieu’s. He 
would seem to have come as near as any one ever did to be- 
ing the natural master of his part in life. But the world 
was too much for him ; as it is for all—at last. Witness the 


- Montesquieu. 191 





contrast of these two different sets of expressions from his 
pen. In earlier manhood he says: 

Study has been for me the sovereign remedy for all the dissatisfactions 

of life, having never had a sense of chagrin that an hour’s reading would 

not dissipate. I wake in the morning with a secret joy to behold the 


light. I behold the light with a kind of ravishment, and all the rest of 
the day I am happy. 


In late life, the brave, cheerful tone had declined to this: 


I am broken down with fatigue; I must repose for the rest of my life. 


Then it took a further fall to this: 


I have expected to kill myself for the last three months, finishing an 
addition to my work on the origin and changes of the French civil law. 
It will take only three hours to read it; but, I assure you, it has been 
such a labor to me, that my hair has turned white under it all. 


Finally it touches nadir: 

It [his work] has almost cost me my life; I must rest; I can work no 
more, 

My candles are all burned out; I have set off all my cartridges. 


When Montesquieu died, only Diderot, among Parisian 
men of letters, followed him to his tomb. 


Belonging to an entirely different world, literary, social, 
political, from that. in which Montesquieu flourished—more 
than one full century, and that a French century, had in- 
tervened—was a man kindred in genius with him, to whom, 
for the double reason that his intellectual rank deserves it, 
and that the subject of his principal work is one to com- 
mand especially the interest of Americans, we feel compelled 
to devote serious, though it must. be hastening, attention. We 
refer to Alexis de Tocquevittz, the author of that famous 
book, ‘‘ Democracy in America.” We can most conveniently 
discharge our duty by letting their likeness in intellectual 
character and achievement bridge for us the chasm of time 
between the two men, and thus considering the later in 
conjunction here with the earlier author. 

“ Democracy in America” is a most remarkable book to 


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have been, as in fact it was, the production of a young man 
of thirty. It was the fruit of a tour m the United States 
undertaken by the writer ostensibly to visit in an official 
capacity the prisons of the new nation that France had 
helped create, in a kind of counterpoise to England, on this 
side of the Atlantic. The inquisitive young French inspector 
inspected much more than the prison system of the lusty in- 
fant republic. He observed and studied American institu- 
tions and manners at large, in order to lay a base line for the 
boldest speculative triangulation into the probable political 
future of the world. 

De Tocqueville believed that democracy, as a system of 
government, was destined to prevail universally. He wrote 
his observations and reflections, and he made his guesses, 
primarily for the instruction of France. So confident was 
his conviction on the subject of democratic destiny for his 
own country at least, that, while as yet the apparently pro- 
found peace was undisturbed of the monarchical reaction 
under Louis Philippe, he predicted an impending revolution ; 
predicted in fact the revolution which actually occurred 
in 1848. France, after that date, both during the prophet’s 
life, and subsequently to his death, experienced her vibra- 
tions from one form of government to another; but no one 
can now deny that thus far the resultant tendency is in favor 
of De Tocqueville’s speculative forecast of the political 
future of his nation. The same thing is true, we think, 
more broadly, of the world in general; and of this Brazil 
apparently furnishes a striking late instance in confirmation. 

“Democracy in America” is a classic in literature. Its 
credit is highest with those best qualified to form a judg- 
ment. But its fame is universal. It associates its author in 
rank of genius with the foremost political philosophers of 
the world—with Machiavelli, with Montesquieu, with Burke. 
Every American aiming at a political career, every Ameri- 
ean journalist having to discuss political subjects should be 
familiar with this book. Mr. Bryce’s more recent work on 
the United States, which has sprung so suddenly into such 


De Tocqueville. 193 





commanding fame, by no means supersedes, though it does 
most usefully supplement, De Tocqueville’s monumental 
treatise. 

Of Alexis de Tocqueville’s life it need only be said that, 
sprung of a noble French family, he ran a respectable, 
though neither a brilliant, nor a very influential, career in the 
politics of his country; until, discontented with the second 
empire, that of the usurper, Louis Napoleon, he retired, about 
1851, from public service and devoted himself to labor with 
the pen. His second chief work was “The Ancient Régime,” 
published in 1856, three years before his death. 

We cannot probably make a better brief selection, at once 
more characteristic and interesting, from De Tocqueville’s 
“ Democracy in America” than by presenting in large part 
the chapter entitled: “Causes which render democratic 
armies weaker than other armies at the outset of a campaign, 
and more formidable in a protracted warfare.” 

A striking illustrative light was destined to be thrown by 
momentous subsequent history in our own land on the sagac- 
ity and justness of the speculations hazarded here by the 
author on his particular topic. 

It would not be far wrong to consider that Americans, 
by the great civil war, furnished, in a single historical case, 
the double example required for full illustration of De 
Tocqueville’s point: an example of the democratic, together 
with an example of the aristocratic, community engaging in 
war after a long peace. Readers may make each his own 
comparison of the Frenchman’s philosophical speculations 
with the actual facts that emerged in the course of our 
national strife: 

Any army is in danger of being conquered at the outset of a campaign, 
after a long peace; any army which has long been engaged in warfare 
has strong chances of victory: this truth is peculiarly applicable to demo- 
cratic armies. In aristocracies the military profession, being a privileged 
eareer, is held in honor even in time of peace. Men of great talents, great 
attainments, and great ambition embrace it; the army is in all respects on 
a level with the nation, and frequently above it. 


We have seen, on the contrary, that among a democratic people the 
9 


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choicer minds of the nation are gradually drawn away from the military 
profession to seek, by other paths, distinction, power, and especially 
wealth. After a long peace—and in democratic ages the periods of peace 
are loug—the army is always inferior to the country itself. In this state 
it is called into active service; and until war has altered it, there is 
danger for the country as well as for the army. 

I have shown that in democratic armies, and in time of peace, the rule of 
seniority is the supreme and inflexible law of advancement. This is not only 
a consequence, as I have hefore observed, of the constitution of these 
armies, but of the constitution of the people, and dt will always occur. 


The words italicized by us above illustrate the intrepid 
firmness of our author in staking the fortune of an opinion 
of his upon the risk of confutation by future fact. He 
affirms, it will be seen, absolutely, and does not seek to save 
himself by a clause. 


Again, as among these nations the officer derives his position in the 
country solely from his position in the army, and as he draws all the dis- 
tinction and the competency he enjoys from the same source, he does not 
retire from his profession or is not superannuated till toward the extreme 
close of life. The consequence of these two causes is that when a demo- 
cratic people goes to war after a long interval of peace all the leading 
officers of the army are old men. I speak not only of the generals, but 
of the non-commissioned officers, who have most of them been stationary, 
or have only advanced step by step. It may be remarked with surprise 
that in a democratic army after along peace all the soldiers are mere 
boys, and all the superior officers in declining years; so that the former — 
are wanting in experience, the latter in vigor. This is a strong element 
of defeat, for the first condition of successful generalship ts youth. I should 
not have ventured to say so if the greatest captain of modern times had 
not made the observation. [The unequaled success of the aged Von 
Moltke in the conduct of the Prussian war against France in 1870 is here 
a curious comment on the text.] 

I am therefore of opinion that when a democratic people engages in a 
war after a long peace, it incurs much more risk of defeat than any other 
nation; but it ought not easily to be cast down by its reverses, for the 
chances of success for such an army are increased by the duration of the 
war. When a war has at length by its long continuance roused the 
whole community from their peaceful occupations and ruined their minor 
undertakings the same passions which made them attach so much impor- 

-tance to the maintenance of peace will be turned to arms. War, after it 
has destroyed all modes of speculation, becomes itself the great and sole 


De Tocqueville. 195 





speculation, to which all the ardent and ambitious desires which equality 
engenders are exclusively directed. Hence it is that the self-same demo- 
cratic nations which are so reluctant to engage in hostilities sometimes 
perform prodigious achievements when once they have taken thie field. 

As the war attracts more and more of public attention, and is seen to 
create high reputations and great fortunes in a short space of time, the 
choicest spirits of the nation enter the military profession. All the enter- 
prising, proud, and martial minds, no longer of the aristocracy solely, but 
of the whole country, are drawn in this direction. As the number of 
competitors for military honors is immense, and war drives every man to 
his proper level, great generals are always sure to spring up. <A long 
war produces upon a democratic army the same effects that a revolution 
produces upon a people; it breaks through regulations, and allows ex- 
traordinary men to rise above the common level. Those officcrs whose 
bodies and minds have grown old in peace are removed, or superannuated, 
or they die. In their stead a host of young men are pressing on whose 
frames are already hardened, whose desires are extended and iuflamed by 
active service. They are bent on advancement at all hazards, and per- 
petual advancement. They are followed by others with the Same pas- 
sions and desires, and after these are others yet, unlimited by aught but 
the size of the army. The principle of equality opens the door of ambition 
to all, and death provides chances for ambition. Death is constantly thin- 
ning the ranks, making vacancies, closing and opening the career of arms. 

There is, moreover, a secret connection between the military character 
and the character of democracies which war brings to light. Themen of 
democracies are naturally passionately eager to acquire what they covet, 
and to enjoy it on easy conditions. They, for the most part, worship 
chance, and are much less afraid of death than of difficulty. This is the 
spirit which they bring to commerce and manufactures; and this same 
spirit, carried with them to the field of battle, induces them willingly to 
expose their lives in order to secure in a moment the rewards of victory. 
No kind of greatness is more pleasing to the imagination of a democratic 
people than military greatness—a greatness of vivid and sudden luster, 
obtained without toil, by nothing but the risk of life. 

Thus, while the interest and the tastes of the members of a democratic 
community divert them from war, their habits of mind fit them for carry- 
ing on war well; they soon make good soldiers when they are roused from 
their business and their enjoyments. 

If peace is peculiarly hurtful to democratic armies, war secures to them 
advantages which no other armies ever possess; and these advantages, 

' however little felt at first, cannot fail in the end to give them the victory. 
An aristocratic nation which, in a contest with a democratic people, does 
not succeed in ruining the latter at the outset of the war always runs a 
great risk of being conquered by it, 


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“Democracy in America” must be credited with a very 
important teaching influence on the political thought of 
mankind. This influence is more than the impulse of 
stimulating speculation. It is a practical force fruitful of 
solid political result. The present writer remembers hearing 
De Tocqueville taught to eager audiences of French students 
in the Collége de France, at Paris, by M. Laboulaye, a popular 
professor in that national institution. This was while in 
France the second empire remained as yet apparently firm on 
its base, and while in this country the great duel between 
section and section remained as yet apparently doubtful. The 
applause with which the lecturer’s praise of free institutions 
was greeted signified much. It signified that the leaven of 
De Tocqueville’s ideas was working in those young hearts. 
(M. Laboulaye’s lectures, which possessed original merit of 
their own, were finally published in a volume.) Present 
republican France owes, in no despicable degree, its existence 
to the fact that De Tocqueville visited, and reported, and 
interpreted the United States to his countrymen. Perhaps, 
also, it is true that the American Union stands to-day partly | 
because the popular sentiment created by De Tocqueville in 
France favorable to American democracy was too strong, too 
vivid, and too universal, for the emperor safely to disregard 
it, in imperial acts, long threatened, hostile to the integrity of 
the republic. If De Tocqueville is right, if democratic 
institutions are indeed ultimately to prevail throughout the 
world, certainly it cannot be denied that the prophet himself 
will have done his part toward fulfilling his prophecy. 

We feel that we shall have done scant justice to the high 
and serious spirit who forms the subject of these concluding 
pages of the present chapter, if we do not go from the one 
work itself, by example out of which we have shown him, to 
expressions of his in his correspondence that may let us a 
little deeper into the personal secret of the man himself. 
De Tocqueville, though, as we have intimated, a believer in 
the democratic destiny of the world, was not such in virtue” 
of being a democrat by preference himself, On the contrary, 


De Tocqueville. 197 





his own aristocratic blood favoring it perhaps, his individual 
choice would apparently have gone, not for, but against, de- 
mocracy. This seems to be indicated in what follows, written 
to a friend concerning the purpose of his work, “ Democracy 
in America” : 


I wished to show what in our days a democratic people really was, 
and, by a rigorously accurate picture, to produce a double effect on the 
men of my day. Tothose who have fancied an ideal democracy, as a brill- 
iant.and easily realized dream, I undertook to show that they had clothed 
the picture in false colors; that the democratic government which they 
desired, though it may procure real benefits to the people who can bear it, 
has none of the elevated features with which their imaginations would en- 
dow it; and moreover, that such a government can only maintain itself 
under certain conditions of faith, enlightenment, and private morality, 
which we have not yet reached, and which we must labor to attain before 
grasping their political results. 

To men for whom the word ‘‘democracy”’ is the synonym of over- 
throw, spoliation, anarchy, and murder, I have endeavored to prove that 
it was possible for democracy to govern society, and yet to respect prop- 
erty, to recognize rights, to spare liberty, to honor religion; that if demo- 
cratic government is less fitted than other forms to develop some of the 
finest faculties of the human soul, it has yet its noble and its lovely feat- 
ures; and that perhaps, after all. it may be the will of God to distribute 
a moderate degree of happiness to the mass of men, and not to concentrate 
great felicity and great perfection on afew. I have tried, moreover, to 
demonstrate that, whatever might be their opinion upon these points, the 
time for discussing them was past; that the world marched onward day 
by day towards a condition of social equality, and dragged them and every 
one along with it; that their only choice now lay between evils hence- 
forth inevitable; that the practical question of this day was not whether 
you would have an aristocracy or a democracy, but whether you would 
havea democratic society, without poetry and without grandeur, but with 
morality and order; or a democratic society disorganized and depraved, 
delivered over to a furious frenzy, or else bent beneath a yoke heavier than 
any that have weighed upon mankind since the fall of the Roman Empire. 


The “ Commune ” in France, “ Nihilism” in Russia, ‘‘ Social- 
ism ” in Germany, “ Nationalism” in the United States, are 
all of them, each in its own different way, remarkable histor- 
ical commentaries on the prophetic political forecast contained 
in the foregoing letter. ~ 


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Here is ripe practical wisdom occurring in a letter written 
by De Tocqueville about two years before his death : 


You know that my most settled principle is, that there is no period of 
a man’s life at which he is entitled to rest; and that effort out of one’s 
self, and still more above one’s self, is as necessary in age as in youth— 
nay, even more necessary. Man in this world is like a traveler who is 
always walking towards a colder region, and who is therefore obliged to 
be more active as he goes farther north. The great malady of the soul 
_ is cold. Andin order to counteract and combat this formidable illness, he 
must keep up the activity of his mind not only by work, but by contact 
with his fellow-men and with the world. Retirement from the great con- 
flicts of the world is desirable no doubt for those whose strength is on the 
decline ; but absolute retirement, away from the stir of life, is not desirable 
for any man, nor at any age. 


His experience as practical politician made him write thus: 


It is a sad side of humanity that politics uncovers. We may say, with- 
out making any exception, that nothing there is either thoroughly pure 
or thoroughly disinterested; nothing really generous, nothing hearty or 
spontaneous. There is no youth, even among the youngest; and some- 
thing cold, selfish, and premeditated may be detected even in the most 
apparently passionate proceedings. 


There was so much healthy reaction in De Tocqueville’s 
moral nature that, notwithstanding the disparaging views, on 
his part, thus revealed of human worth, he never became 
cynical. He could even write as follows to a friend of his 
who, he thought, went too far in decrying mankind: 


You make humanity out worse than it is. I have seen many countries, 
studied many men, mingled in many public transactions, and the result of 
my observation is not what you suppose. Men in general are neither very 
good nor very bad; they are simply mediocre, I have never closely ex- 
amined even the best without discovering faults and frailties invisible at 
first. I have always in the end found among the worst certain elements 
and jhwlding-points of honesty. There are two men in every man: it is 
childis!i to see only one; it is sad and unjust to look only at the other. 
. . - Man, with all his vices, his weaknesses, and his virtues, this strange 
mixture of good and bad, of low and lofty, of sincere and depraved, is, 
after all, the object most deserving of study, interest, pity, affection, and 
admiration to be found upon this earth; and since we have no angels, we- 
cannot attach ourselves to anything greater or worthier than our fellow- 
creatures, 


De Tocqueville. 199 





And, on the whole, De Tocqueville’s own practice in life 
showed that he wrote not only with sincerity, but with 
earnestness, when he wrote those words. It was not of such 
Frenchmen as De Tocqueville that the author of that heavy 
sentence on France could have been thinking—that the 
French character was made up without conscience. We, for 
our part, cannot but hold that De Tocqueville is as much 
more solid as he may be less brilliant than his predecessor 
and fellow, Montesquieu. They were both too theoretical; 
that is, too exclusively French as distinguished, for instance, 
from English, in political philosophy. They began to be 
deductive, when to be inductive yet longer would have been 
their wiser part. Ina word—like Guizot, too, the author of the 
“History of Civilization,” and the minister of Citizen-King 
Louis Philippe—both Montesquieu and De Tocqueville failed 
to escape what the French would call the defect of their 
quality. 


Sw 
VOLTAIRE. 
1694-1778. 


By the volume and the variety, joined to the unfailing 
brilliancy, of his production ; by his prodigious effectiveness; 
and by his universal fame, Voltaire is undoubtedly entitled 
to rank first, with no fellow, among the eighteenth-century 
literary men, not merely of France, but of the world. He 
was not a great man, he produced no great single work, but 
he must nevertheless be pronounced a great writer. There is 
hardly any species of composition to which, in the long 
course of his activity, he did not turn his talent, It can- 
not be said that he succeeded splendidly in all; but in some 
he succeeded splendidly, and he failed abjectly in none, 
There is not a great thought, and there is not a flat ex- 
pression, in the whole bulk of his multitudinous and multi- 


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farious works. Read him wherever you will, in the ninty-seven 
volumes (equivalent, probably in the aggregate, to two 
hundred volumes like the present) which, in one leading 
edition, collect his productions, you may often find him 
superficial, you may often find him untrustworthy, you will 
certainly often find him flippant, but not less certainly you 
will never find him obscure, and you will never find him 
dull. The clearness, the vivacity of this man’s mind were 
something almost preternatural. So, too, were his readiness, 
his versatility, his audacity. He had no distrust of himself, 
no awe of his fellow-men, no reverence for God; to deter him . 
from any attempt with his pen, however presuming. If a 
state ode were required, it should be ready to order at 
twelve to-morrow; if an epic poem—to be classed with the 
“ Tliad ” and the “ Aineid ”—the “Henriade” was promptly 
forthcoming, to answer the demand. He did not shrink 
from flouting a national idol, by freely finding fault with 
Corneille; and he lightly undertook the task of extinguishing 
a venerable form of Christianity, simply with pricks, 
innumerably repeated, of his tormenting pen. 

A very large part of the volume of Voltaire’s production 
consists of letters, written by him to correspondents perhaps 
more numerous, and more various in rank, from kings 
on the throne down to scribblers in the garret, than ever, 
in any other case, exchanged such communications with a 
literary man. Another considerable proportion of his work in 
literature took the form of pamphlets, either anonymously or 
pseudonymously published, in which this master-spirit of 
intellectual disturbance and ferment found it convenient, or 
advantageous, or-safe, to promulge and propagate his ideas. 
A shower of such publications was incessantly escaping from 
Voltaire’s pen. More formal and regular, more confessedly 
ambitious, literary essays of his, were poems in every kind— 
heroic, mock-heroic, lyric, elegiac, comic, tragic, satiric— 
historical and biograpical monographs, and tales or novels 
of a peculiar class. 

Voltaire’s poetry does not count for very much now. 


Voltaire. 201 





Still, its first success was so great that it will always remain 
an important topic in literary history. Besides this, it really 
is, in some of its kinds, remarkable work. Voltaire’s epic 
verse is almost an exception, needful to be made, from our 
assertion that this author is nowhere dull. “The Henriade ” 
comes dangerously near that mark. It is a tasteless repro- 
duction of Lucan’s faults, with little reproduction of Lucan’s 
virtues. Voltaire’s comedies are bright and witty, but they 
are not laughter-provoking ; and they do not possess the ele- 
mental and creative character of Shakspeare’s or Moliére’s 
work. His tragedies are better; but they do not avoid that 
cast of mechanical which seems necessarily to belong to 
poetry produced by talent, however consummate, unaccom- 
panied with genius. Voltaire’s histories are luminous and 
readable narratives, but they cannot claim the merit either 
of critical accuracy or of philosophic breadth and insight. 
His letters would have to be read in considerable volume in 
order to furnish a full satisfactory idea of the author. His 
tales, finally, afford the most available, and, on the whole, 
likewise the best means of arriving shortly and easily at a 
knowledge of Voltaire. 

But, before coming to these, we owe it to our readers, 
and perhaps to ourselves, to justify with example what, a 
little way back, we said of Voltaire as epic poet. 

Voltaire was profoundly influenced by his personal obser- 
vations of what England was, alike in her literary, her political, 
and her theological aspects. Voltairism may, in fact, he pro- 
nounced a transplantation from English soil. It was English 
deism “ mixed with cunning sparks of ”—-French wit. A very 
short passage from the “ Henriade” will suffice the double 
purpose of showing what in quality of style that poem of 
Voltaire’s is, and of suggesting its author’s sense of debt to 
the England which, for its freedom and its free-thinking, he 
so much admired. The reader will not fail to note the skill 
with which Voltaire manages in praising another country to 
give a very broad hint to his own. The old-fashioned for- 


mal heroic couplet, with rhyme, in which the following 
9* 


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passage appears translated, is not inapposite to the artificial 
cast and style of the original. Various passions, such as 
“ Fear,” are not only personified in the “ Henriade,” but made 
to play the part of veritable characters in the action of the 
poem. Supernatural interferences occur. History is boldly 
fabricated or falsified at the pleasure of the poet. Of this 
audacious freedom the passage from which we take our ex- 
tract presents an instance. Voltaire sends his hero on a 
mythical mission to England to solicit help from Queen 
Elizabeth. He here meets every reader’s familiar old friend, 
“a venerable hermit,” who instructs him in English history 
and manners. Voltaire wrote prefaces and notes to vindi- 
cate his epic practices. He went to Virgil for precedents. 
Lucan he censured for not making free enough with his 
history. “Eliza” is, of course, Queen Elizabeth, and 
“ Bourbon,” is the hero of the epic, Henry IV. of France, 
from whose name, it need not be said, comes the title, “ Hen- 
riade.” We quote from the first canto of the poem: 


A virgin queen the regal scepter sway’d, 

And fate itself her sovereign power obeyed. 

The wise Eliza, whose directing hand 

Had the great scale of Europe at command; 

And ruled a people that alike disdain 

Or freedom’s ease, or slavery’s iron chain. 

Of every loss her reign oblivion bred; 

There, flocks unnumbered graze each flowery mead. 

Britannia’s vessels rule the azure seas, 

Corn fills her plains, and fruitage loads her trees. 

From pole to pole her gallant navies sweep 

The waters of the tributary deep. 

On Thames’s banks each flower of genius thrives, 
~ There sports the Muse, and Mars his thunder gives. 

Three different powers at Westminster appear, 

And all admire the ties which join them there. 

Whom interest parts the laws together bring, 

The people’s deputies, the peers and king. 

One whole they form, whose terror wide extends 

To neighboring nations, and their rights defends, 

Thrice happy times, when grateful subjects show 

That loyal, warm affection which is due! 


Voltaire. 208 





But happier still, when freedom’s blessings spring 
From the wise conduct of a prudent king! 

O when, cried Bourbon, ravished at the sight, 

In France shall peace and glory thus unite ? 


A poem flaunting on its front invidious praise like the 
foregoing of a foreign government so different from the gov- 
ernment of France, could not be very acceptable to the 
ruling classes of his time in the author’s own country. But 
in England, during the poet’s two years’ stay in that island, 
a revised edition of the “Henriade” was issued under 
auspices the most august and imposing. Queen Caroline 
headed the list of subscribers, and such was the brilliancy of 
the patronage extended to the poem that Voltaire, as is 
with probability said, netted forty thousand dollars from 
his English edition—a sum of money equivalent to, say, 
one hundred thousand dollars, present value. This early 
success laid the foundation of a fortune for Voltaire, which 
the skill, the prudence, the servility, the greed, and the un- 
scrupulousness of the owner subsequently built into propor- 
tions that were nothing less than princely. Voltaire’s annual 
income at his death was about a hundred thousand dollars. 
It seems incredible that a man so rich, and, in some ways, it 
must be acknowledged, so generous, should have been at the 
same time so mean, so sordid, so literally perjured in sor- 
didness, as Voltaire is demonstrated, and admitted even by 
his farthest-going admirers, for instance, Mr. John Morley, 
to have been. 

Among Voltaire’s tales doubtless the one most eligible 
for use, to serve our present purpose, is his “ Candide.” This 
is a nondescript piece of fiction, the design of which is, by 
means of a narrative of travel and adventure, constructed 
without much regard to the probability of particular in- 
cidents, to set forth, in the characteristic mocking vein of 
Voltaire, the vanity and misery of mankind. The author’s 
invention is often whimsical enough; but it is constantly so 
ready, so reckless, and so abundant, that the reader never 
tires as he is hurried ceaselessly forward from change to 


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change of scene and circumstance. The play of wit is inces- 
sant. The style is limpidity itself. Yotr sympathies are 
never painfully engaged, even in recitals of experience that 
ought to be the most heart-rending. There is never a touch 
of noble moral sentiment to relieve the monotony of mock- 
ery that lightly laughs at you and tantalizes you, page after 
page, from the beginning to the end of the book. The ban- 
ter isnot good-natured; though, on the other hand, it cannot 
justly be pronounced ill-natured; and it is, in final effect upon 
the reader’s mind, bewildering and depressing in the ex- 
treme. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity; such is the comfort- 
less doctrine of the book. The apples are the apples of 
Sodom, everywhere in the world. There is no virtue any- 
where, no good, no happiness. Life is a cheat, the love of 
life is a cruelty, and beyond life there is nothing. At least, 
there is no glimpse given of any compensating future 
reserved for men, a future to redress the balance of good 
and ill experienced here and now. Faith and hope, those 
two eyes of the soul, are smilingly quenched in their sockets, 
and you are left blind, in a whirling world of darkness, with 
a whirling world of darkness before you. 

Such is “Candide.” We select a single passage for speci- 
men. ‘The passage we select is more nearly free than almost 
any other passage as long, in this extraordinary romance, 
would probably be found, from impure implications, It is, 
besides, more nearly serious in apparent motive than is the 
general tenor of the production. Here, however, as else- 
where, the writer keeps carefully down his mocking mask. 
At least, you are left tantalizingly uncertain all the time 
how much the grin you face is the grin of the man, and how 
much the grin of a visor that he wears. 

Candide, the hero, is a young fellow of ingenuous character, 
brought successively under the lead of several different per- 
sons wise in the ways of the world, who act toward him, each 
in his turn, the part of “ guide, philosopher, and friend.” 
Candide, with such a mentor bearing the name Martin, has 
now arrived at Venice. Candide speaks: 


Voltaire. 205 





“Thave heard a great talk of the Senator Pococuranté, who lives in 
that fine house at the Brenta, where they say he entertains foreigners in 
the most polite manner. They pretend this man is a perfect stranger to 
uneasiness.” ‘I should be glad to see so extraordinary a being,” said 
Martin. Candide thereupon sent a messenger to Signor Pococurante 
desiring permission to wait on him the next day. : 

Candide and his friend Martin went into a gondola on the Brenta, and 
arrived at the palace of the noble Pococuranté: the gardens were laid out 
in elegant taste and adorned with fine marble statues; his palace was 
built after the most approved rules of architecture. The master of the 
house, who was a man of sixty, and very rich, received our two travelers 
with great politeness, but without much ceremony, which somewhat dis- 
concerted Candide, but was not at all displeasing to Martin. 

As soon as they were seated two very pretty girls, neatly dressed, 
brought in chocolate, which was extremely well frothed. Candide could 
not help making encomiums upon their beauty and graceful carriage. 
“The creatures are well enough,” said the senator. “I make them my 
companions, for I am heartily tired of the ladies of the town, their co- 
quetry, their jealousy, their quarrels, their humors, their meannesses, their 
pride, and their folly. I am weary of making sonnets, or of paying for 
sonnets to he made, on them; but, after all, these two girls begin to grow 
very indifferent to me.” 

After having refreshed himself, Candide walked into a large gallery, 
where he was struck with the sight of a fine collection of paintings. 
“Pray,” said Candide, “by what master are the two first of these?” 
“They are Raphael’s,” answered the senator. “I gave a great deal of 
money for them seven years ago, purely out of curiosity, as they were 
said to be the finest pieces in Italy: but I cannot say they please me; 
the coloring is dark and heavy; the figures do not swell nor come out 
enough, and the drapery is very bad. In short, notwithstanding the en- 
comiums lavished upon them, they are not, in my opinion, a true repre- 
sentation of nature. I approve of no paintings but where I think I be- 
hold Nature herself; and there are very few, if any, of that kind to be 
met with. I have what is called a fine collection, but I take no manner 
of delight in them.” 

While dinner was getting ready Pococuranté ordered a concert. Can- 
dide praised the music to the skies, ‘This noise,” said the noble Vene- 
tian, ‘‘may amuse one for a little time; but if it was to last above half an 
hour it would grow tiresome to everybody, though perhaps no one would 
care to own it. Music is become the art of executing what is difficult; 
now, whatever is difficult cannot be long pleasing. 

“T believe I might take more pleasure in an opera, if they had not made 
such a monster of that speciés of dramatic entertainment as perfectly 
shocks me; and I am amazed how people can bear to see wretched trage- 


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dies set to music, where the scenes are contrived for no other purpose than 
to lug in, as it were by the ears, three or four ridiculous songs, to give a 
favorite actress an opportunity of exhibiting her pipe. Let who will or 
can die away in raptures at the trills of a eunuch quavering the majestic 
part of Cesar or Cato, and strutting in a foolish manner upon the stage. 
For my part, I have long ago renounced these paltry entertainments, 
which constitute the glory of modern Italy, and are so dearly purchased 
by crowned heads.” Candide opposed these sentiments, but he did it in 
a discreet manner. As for Martin, he was entirely of the old senator's 
opinion. - 

Dinner being served up, they sat down to table, and after a very hearty 
repast, returned to the library. Candide, observing Homer richly bound, 
commended the noble Venetian’s taste. “ This,” said he, “is a book that 
was once the delight of the great Pangloss, the best philosopher in Ger- 
many.” “Homer is no favorite of mine,” answered Pococuranté very 
coolly. “I was made to believe once that I took a pleasure in reading 
him; but his continual repetitions of battles must-have all such a resem- 
blance with each other; his gods that are forever in a hurry and bustle, 
without ever doing any thing; his Helen, that is the cause of the 
war, and yet hardly acts in the whole performance; his Troy, that holds 
out so long without being taken; in short, all these things together 
make the poem very insipid to me. I have asked some learned men 
whether they are not in reality as much tired as myself with reading 
this poet. Those who spoke ingenuously assured me that he had made 
them fall asleep, and yet that they could not well avoid giving him a place 
in their libraries; but that it was merely as they would do an antique, or 
those rusty medals which are kept only for curiosity, and are of no man- 
ner of use in commerce.” . 

“But your excellency does not surely form the same opinion of Virgil ?” 
said Candide. “Why, I grant,” replied Pococuranté, “that the second, 
third, fourth, and sixth books of his ‘A§neid’ are excellent; but as for 
his pious /neas, his strong Cloanthus, his friendly Achates, his boy 
Ascanius, his silly King Latinus, his ill-bred Amata, his insipid Lavinia, 
and some other characters much in the same strain, I think there cannot 
in nature be anything more flat and disagreeable. I must confess I pre- 
fer Tasso far beyond him; nay, even that sleepy tale-teller Ariosto.” 

“* May I take the liberty to ask if you do not receive great pleasure from 
reading Horace?” said Candide. “There are maxims in this writer,” 
replied Pococuranté, “from whence a man of the world may reap some 
benefit; and the short measure of the verse makes them more easily to 
be retained in the memory. But I see nothing extraordinary in his 
journey to Brundusium, and his account of his bad dinner; nor in his 
dirty, low quarrel between one Rupilius, whose words, as he expresses it, 
were full of poisonous filth; and another, whose language was dipped in 


Voltaire. 207 





vinegar. His indelicate verses against old women and witches have fre 
quently given me great offense; nor can I discover the great merit of his 
telling his friend Mzcenas, that, if he will but rank him in the class of 
lyrie poets, his lofty head shall touch the stars, Ignorant readers are apt 
to advance everything by the lump in a writer of reputation. For my 
part, I read only to please myself. I like nothing but what makes for my 
purpose.” Candide, who had been brought up with a notion of never 
making use of his own judgment, was astonished at what he heard; but 
Martin found there was a good deal of reason in the senator’s remarks. 
“Qh, here is a Tully!” said Candide; ‘this great man, I fancy, you 
‘are never tired of reading.’ “Indeed, I never read him at all,” replied 
Pococuranté. ‘ What the deuce is it tome whether he pleads for Rabirius 
or Cluentius? I try causes enough myself. I had once some liking to 
his philosophical works; but when I found he doubted of everything, I 
thought I knew as much as himself, and had no need of a guide to learn 
ignorance.” 

“Hal” cried Martin, “here are fourscore volumes of the ‘Memoirs of 
the Academy of Sciences; ’ perhaps there may be something curious end 
valuable in this collection.” ‘ Yes,” auswered Pococuranté; “so there 
might, if any one of these compilers of this rubbish had only invented 
the art of pin-making. But all these volumes are filled with mere chimer- 
ical systems, without one single article conducive to real utility.” 

“T see a prodigious number of plays,” said Candide, “in Italian, 
Spanish, and French.” “ Yes,” replied the Venetian; “ there are, I think, 

_ three thousand, and not three dozen of them good for anything. As to 
those huge volumes of divinity, and those enormous collections of ser- 
mons, they are not all together worth one single page of Seneca; and I 
fancy you will readily believe that neither myself nor any one else ever 
looks into them.” 

Martin, perceiving some shelves filled with English books, said to the 
senator: “I fancy that a republican must be highly delighted with those 
books, which are most of them written with a noble spirit of freedom.” 
“Tt is noble to write as we think,” said Pococuranté ; “it is the privilege 
of humanity. Throughout Italy we write only what we do not think; 
and the present inhabitants of the country of the Czsars and Antoni- 
nuses dare not acquire a single idea without the permission of a father 
Dominican. I should be enamored of the spirit of the English nation 
did it not utterly frustrate the good effects it would produce by passion ~ 
and the spint of party.” 

Candide, seeing a Milton, asked the senator if he did not think that 
author a great man. ‘ Who?” said Pococuranté sharply. ‘That bar- 
barian, who writes a tedious commentary, in ten books of rambling verse, 
on the first chapter of Genesis! That slovenly imitator of the Greeks, 
who disfigures the creation by making the Messiah take a pair of com- 


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. passes from heaven’s armory to plan the world; “whereas Moses repre- 
sented the Deity as producing the whole universe by his fiat! Can I think 
you have any esteem for a writer who has spoiled Tasso’s hell and the 
devil; who transforms Lucifer, sometimes into a toad, and at others into 
a pigmy ; who makes him say the same thing over again a hundred times; 
who metamorphoses him into a school-divine; and who, by an absurdly 
serious imitation of Ariosto’s comic invention of fire-arms, represents the 
devils and angels cannonading each other in heaven! Neither I, nor any 
other Italian, can possibly take pleasure in such melancholy reveries, But 
the marriage of Sin and Death, and snakes issuing from the womb of the 
former, are enough to make any person sick that is not lost to all sense of 
delicacy. This obscene, whimsical, and disagreeable poem met with the 
neglect that it deserved at its first publication ; and I only treat the author 
now as he was treated in his own country by his contemporaries.” 

Candide was sensibly grieved at this speech, as he had a great respect 
for Homer, and was very fond of Milton. “Alas!” said he softly to 
Martin, ‘I am afraid this man holds our German poets in great contempt.” 
“ There would be no such great harm in that,” said Martin. ‘Oh, what 
a surprising man!” said Candide to himself. ‘‘ What a prodigious genius 
is this Pococuranté! Nothing can please him!” 

After finishing their survey of the library they went down into the 
garden, when Candide commended the several beauties that offered them- 
selves to his view. ‘I know nothing upon earth laid out in such bad 
taste,” said Pococuranté; “everything about it is childish and trifling; 
but I shall have another laid out to-morrow upon a nobler plan.” 

As soon as our two travelers had taken leave of his excellency, ‘‘ Well,” 
said Candide to Martin, “I hope you will own that this man is the happiest 
of all mortals, for he is above everything he possesses.” “But do you 
not see,” answered Martin, “that he likewise dislikes everything he pos- 
sesses? It was an observation of Plato long since, that those are not 
the best stomachs that reject, without distinction, all sorts of ali- 
ments.” “True,” said Candide; “but still, there must certainly be a 
pleasure in criticising everything, and in perceiving faults where others 

- think they see beauties.” “That is,” replied Martin, “ there is a pleas- 
ure in having no pleasure.” ‘ Well, well,” said Candide, ‘I find that I 
shall be the only happy man at last, when I am blessed with the sight of 
my dear Cunegund.” “It is good to hope,” said Martin. 


The single citation preceding sufficiently exemplifies, at 
their best, though at their worst not, the style and the spirit 
of Voltaire’s “Candide;” as his “Candide” sufficiently ex- 
emplifies the style and the spirit of the most characteristic 
of Voltaire’s writings in general. “Pococurantism” is a 


Voltaire. 209 





word, now not uncommon in English, contributed by Vol- 
taire to the vocabulary of literature. To readers of the fore- 
going extract, the sense of the term will not need to be ex- 
plained. We respectfully suggest to our dictionary-makers, 
that the fact stated of its origin in the “Candide” of Vol- 
taire would be interesting and instructive tomany. Voltaire 
coined the name, to suit the character of his Venetian gen- 
tleman, from two Italian words which mean together “ little- 
caring.” Signor Pococuranté is the immortal type of men 
that have worn out their capacity of fresh sensation and 
enjoyment. 

Mr. John Morley’s elaborate monograph on Voltaire 
claims the attention of readers desirous of exhaustive ac- 
quaintance with its subject. This author writes in sympathy 
with Voltaire, so far as Voltaire was an enemy of the 
Christian religion; but in antipathy to him, so far as Vol- 
taire fell short of being an atheist. A similar sympathy, 
limited by a similar antipathy, is observable in the same 
author’s still more extended monograph on Rousseau. The 
sympathy works without the antipathy to limit it, in Mr. 
Morley’stwo volumes on “ Diderot and the Encyclopzdists ”— 
for Diderot and his closest fellows were good thorough-going 
atheists. 

Even in Voltaire and Rousseau, but particularly in Vol- 
taire, Mr. Morley, though his sympathy with these writers 
is, as we have said, not complete, finds far more to praise 
than to blame. To this eager apostle of atheism, Voltaire 
was at least on the right road, although he did, unfortu- 
nately, stop short of the goal. His influence was potent against 
Christianity, and potent it certainly was not against atheism. 
Voltaire might freely be lauded as on the whole a mighty 
and a beneficent liberalizer of thought. 

And we, we who are neither atheists nor deists—let us not 
deny to Voltaire his just meed of praise. There were streaks 
of gold in the base alloy of that character of his. He burned 
with magnanimous heat against the hideous doctrine and 
practice of ecclesiastical persecution, Carlyle says of Vol- 


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taire, that he “spent his best efforts, and as many still think, 
successfully, in assaulting the Christian religion.” This, true 
though it be, is liable to be falsely understood. It was not 
against the Christian religion, as the Christian religion really 
is, but rather against the Christian religion as the Roman 
hierarchy misrepresented it, that Voltaire ostensibly directed 
his efforts. “You are right,” wrote he to his henchman 
D’Alembert, in 1762, “in assuming that I speak of super- 
stition only; for as to the Christian religion, I respect it and 
love it, as you do.” This distinction of Voltaire’s, with 
whatever degree of simple sincerity on his part made, ought 
to be remembered in his favor, when his memorable motto, 
«“ Eerasez 0 Infdme,” is interpreted and applied. He did not 
mean Jesus Christ by ?Jnfdme; he did not mean the Christian 
religion by it; he did not even mean the Christian Church 
by it; he meant the oppressive despotism and the crass ob- 
scurantism of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. At least, this 
is what he would have said that he meant, what in fact he 
substantially did say that he meant, when incessantly reiter- 
ating, in its various forms, his watchword, “ Ecrasez UV In- 
Same,” “ Ecrasons V Inféme”—* Crush the wretch !” “Let 
us crush the wretch!” His blows were aimed, perhaps, at 
“superstition; ” but they really fell, in the full half of their 
effect, on Christianity itself. Whether Voltaire regretted 
this, whether he would in his heart have had it otherwise, 
may well, in spite of any protestation from him of love for 
Christianity, be doubted. Still, it is never, in judgment of 
Voltaire, to be forgotten that the organized Christianity 
which he confronted was in large part a system justly hate- 
ful to the true and wise lover, whether of God or of man. 
. That system he did well in fighting. Carnal indeed were 
the weapons with which he fought it; and his victory over 
it was a carnal victory, bringing, on the whole, but slender 
net advantage, if any such advantage at all, to the cause of 
final truth and light. The French Revolution, with its ex- 
cesses and its horrors, was perhaps the proper, the legitimate, 
the necessary, fruit of resistance such as was Voltaire’s, in 


Voltaire. 211 





fundamental spirit, to the evils in Church and in State against 
which he conducted so gallantly his life-long campaign. 

But though we thus bring in doubt the work of Voltaire, 
both as to the purity of its motive and as to the value of 
its fruit, we should wrong our sense of justice to ourselves if 
we permitted our readers to suppose us blind to the generous 
things that this arch-infidel did on behalf of the suffering and 
the oppressed. Voltaire more than once wielded that pen of 
his, the most dreaded weapon in Europe, like a knight sworn 
to take on himself the championship of the forlornest of 
causes. There is the historic case of Jean Calas at Toulouse, 
Protestant, an old man of near seventy, broken on the wheel, 
as suspected, without evidence, and against accumulated im- 
possibilities, of murdering his own son, a young man of about 
thirty, by hanging him. Voltaire took up the case and 
pleaded it to the common sense, and to the human feeling, of 
France, with immense effectiveness. It is, in truth, Voltaire’s 
advocacy of righteousness, in this instance of incredible 
wrong, that has made the instance itself immortal. His part 
in the case of Calas, though the most signal, is not the only 
example of Voltaire’s literary knighthood. He hated op- 
pression, and he loved liberty, for himself and for all men, 
with a passion as deep and as constant as any passion of which 
nature had made Voltaire capable. If the liberty that he 
loved was fundamentally liberty as against God no less than 
as against men, and if the oppression that he hated was 
fundamentally the oppression of being put under obligation 
to obey Christ as lord of life and of thought, this was some- 
thing of which, probably, Voltaire never had a clear con- 
sciousness. 

We have now indicated what was most admirable in Vol- 
taire’s personal character. On the whole, he was far from 
being an admirable man. He was vain, he was shallow, he 
was frivolous, he was deceitful, he was voluptuous, he fawned 
on the great, he abased himself before them, he licked the dust 
on which they stood. “ Trajan, est-il content ?” (“Is Trajan 
satisfied ?”)—this, asked, in nauseous adulation, and nauseous 


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self-abasement, by Voltaire of Louis XV., so little like Trajan 
in character—is monumental. The occasion was the produc- 
tion of a piece of Voltaire’s written at the instance of Louis 
XYV.’s mistress, the infamous Madame de Pompadour. The 
king, for answer, simply gorgonized the poet with a stony 
Bourbon stare. 

But, taken altogether, Voltaire’s life was a great success. 
He got on in the world, was rich, was fortunate, was famous, 
was gay, if he was not happy. He had his friendship with 
the great Frederick of Prussia, who filled for his false 
French flatterer a return cup of sweetness, cunningly mixed 
with exceeding bitterness. His death was an appropriate 
coup de thédtre, a felicity of finish to such a life quite beyond 
the reach of art. He came back to Paris, whence he had 
been an exile, welcomed with a triumph transcending the 
triumph of a conqueror. They made a great feast for him, 
a feast of flattery, in the theater. The old man was drunk 
with delight. The delight was too much for him. It liter- 
ally killed him. It was as if a favorite actress should be 
quite smothered to death on the stage under flowers thrown 
in excessive profusion at her feet. 

Let Carlyle’s sentence be our epigraph on Voltaire: 

“No great Man. ... Found always at the top, less by 
power in swimming than by lightness in floating.” 


XVII 
ROUSSEAU: 1712-1778; St. Pierre: 1737-1814. 


THERE are two Rousseaus in French literature. At least 
there was a first, until the second effaced him, and became 
the only. 

We speak, of course, in comparison, and hyperbolically. 
J. B. Rousseau is still named as a lyric poet of the time of 
Louis XIV. But when Rousseau, without initials, is spoken 
of, it is always Jean Jacques Rousseau that is meant. 


Rousseau. 913 





Jean Jacques Rousseau is perhaps the most squalid, as it 
certainly is one of the most splendid, among French literary 
names. ‘The squalor belongs chiefly to the man, but the 
splendor is wholly the writer’s. There is hardly another 
example in the world’s literature of a union so striking of 
these opposites. 

Rousseau’s life he has himself told, in the best, the worst, 
and the most imperishable of his books, the “ Confessions.” 
This book is one to which the adjective charming attaches, 
in a peculiarly literal sense of the word. The spell, how- 
ever, is repellent as well as attractive. But the attraction 
of the style asserts and pronounces itself only the more, in 
triumph over the much there is in the matter to disgust and 
revolt. It is quite the most offensive, and it is well-nigh the 
most fascinating, book that we know. 

The “ Confessions ” begin as follows: 


I purpose an undertaking that never had an example, and whose exe- 
cution never will have an imitator. I would exhibit to my fellows a man, 
in all the truth of nature, and that man—myself. 

Myself alone. I know my ownheart, and I am acquainted with men. 
I am made unlike any one I have ever seen—I dare believe unlike any 
living being. If no better than, I am at least different from, others. 
Whether nature did well or ill in breaking the mold wherein I was cast, 
ean be determined only after having read me. 

Let the last trumpet sound when it will, I will come, with this book in 
my hand, and present myself before the Sovereign Judge. I will boldly 
proclaim: Thus have I acted, thus have I thought, such was I. With 
equal frankness have:I disclosed the good and the evil. I have omitted 
nothing bad, added nothing good; and if I have happened to make use 
of some unimportant ornament, it has, in every case, been simply for the 
purpose of filling up a void occasioned by my lack of memory. I may 
have taken for granted as true what I knew to be possible, never what I 
knew to be false. Such as I was, I have exhibited myself—despicable 
and vile, when so; virtuous, generous, sublime, when so. I have 
unveiled my interior being, such as Thou, Eternal Existence, hast beheld 
it. Assemble around me the numberless throng of my fellow-mortals; 
let them listen to my confessions, let them blush at my depravities, let 
them shrink appalled at my miseries. Let each of them, in his turn, 
with equal sincerity, lay bare his heart at the foot of thy throne, and 
then let a single one tell thee, if he dare, J was better than that man, 


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Notwithstanding our autobiographer’s disavowal of debt 
to example for the idea of his “ Confessions,” it seems clear 
_ that Montaigne here was at least inspiration, if not pattern, 
to Rousseau. But Rousseau resolved to do what Montaigne 
had done, more ingenuously and more courageously than 
Montaigne had done it. This writer will make himself his 
subject, and then treat his subject with greater frankness 
than any man before him ever used about himself, or than any 
man after him would ever use. He undoubtedly suceeeded 
in his attempt. His frankness, in fact, is so forward and 
eager that it is probably even inventive of things disgrace- 
ful to himself. Montaigne makes great pretense of telling 
his own faults, but you observe that he generally chooses 
rather amiable faults of his own to tell. Rousseau’s morbid 
vulgarity leads him to disclose traits in himself of character 
or of behavior, that, despite whatever contrary wishes on 
your part, compel your contempt of the man. And it is for 
the man who confesses, almost more than for the man who is 
guilty, that you feel the contempt. 

The “ Confessions ” proceed : 

I was born at Geneva, in 1712, of Isaac Rousseau and Susannah Ber- 
nard, citizens. .. . I came into the world weak and sickly. I cost my 
mother her life, and my birth was the first of my misfortunes. 

I never learned how my father supported his loss, but I know that he 
remained ever after inconsolable. . . . When he used to say to me, 
“Jean Jacques, let us speak of your mother,” my usual reply was, 
“Well, father, we'll ery then,” a reply which would instantly bring the 
tears to his eyes. “Ah!” he would exclaim with agitation, “ give me 
her back, console me for her Joss, fill up the void she has left in my soul. 
Could I love thee thus wert thou but my son?” Forty years after having 
lost her he expired in the arms of a second wife, hut with the name of 
the first on his lips, and her image engraven on his heart. 

Such were the authors of my being. Of all the gifts Heaven had 
allotted them, a feeling heart was the only one I had inherited. While, 
however, this had been the source of their happiness, it became the spring 
of all my misfortunes. 


“A feeling heart!” That expression tells the literary 
secret of Rousseau. It is hardly too much to say that 
Rousseau was the first French writer to write with his heart ; 


Rousseau. 215 





but heart’s blood was the ink in which almost every word of 
Rousseau’s was written. This was the spring of his marvel- 
ous power. Rousseau: 


My mother had left a number of romances. These father and I betook 
us to reading during the evenings. At first the sole object was, by 
means of entertaining books, to improve me in reading; but, ere long, 
the charm became so potent, that we read turn about without intermis- 
sion, and passed whole nights in this employment. Never could we break 
up till the end of the volume. At times my father, hearing the swallows 
of a morning, would exclaim, quite ashamed of himself, ‘‘ Come, let’s to 
bed; I’m more of a child than you are!” 


The elder Rousseau was right respecting himself. And 

_ such a father would almost necessarily have such a child, 

Jean Jacques Rousseau is to be judged tenderly for his 

faults. What birth and what breeding were his! The 
“ Confessions ” go on: 


I soon acquired, by this dangerous course, not only an extreme facility 
in reading and understanding, but, for my age, a quite unprecedented 
acquaintance with the passions. I had not the slightest conception of 
things themselves at a time when the whole round of sentiments was 
already perfectly familiar to me. I had apprehended nothing—TI had felt all. 


Some hint now of other books read by the boy: 


Plutarch especially became my favorite reading. The 
pleasure which I found in incessantly reperusing him cured me in 
some measure of the romance madness; and I soon came to prefer 
Agesilaus, Brutus, and Aristides to Orondates, Artemenes, and Juba. 
From these interesting studies, joined to the conversations to which they 
gave rise with my father, resulted that free, republican spirit, that haughty 
and untamable character, fretful of restraint or subjection, which has 
tormented me my life long, and that in situations the least suitable for 
giving it play. Incessantly occupied with Rome and Athens, living, so 
to speak, with their great men, born myself the citizen of a republic 
[Geneva], the son of a father with whom patriotism was the ruling pas- 
sion, I caught the flame from him-—I imagined myself a Greek ora 
Roman, and became the personage whose life I was reading. 


On such food of reading and of reverie, young Rousseau’s 
imagination and sentiment battened, while his reason and 
his practical sense starved and died within him, Uncon- 


216 Classie French Course in English. 





sciously thus in part were formed the dreamer of the 
“Emile” and of “The Social Contract.” Another glimpse 
of the home life—if home life such experience can be called 
—of this half-orphan, homeless Genevan boy: 


I had a brother, my elder by seven years. ... He fell into the ways 
of debauchery, even before he was old enough to be really a libertine. 
. . . I remember once when my father was chastising him severely and 
in anger, that I impetuously threw myself between them, clasping him 
tightly. I thus covered him with my body, receiving the blows that were 
aimed at him; and I held out so persistently in this position, that whether 
softened by my cries and tears, or fearing that I should get the worst of 
it, my father was forced to forgive him. In the end my brother turned 
out so bad that he ran away and disappeared altogether. 


It is pathetic—Rousseau’s attempted contrast following, 
between the paternal neglect of his older brother and the 
paternal indulgence of himself: 


If this poor lad was carelessly brought up, it was quite otherwise with 
his brother. . . . My desires were so little excited, and so little crossed, 
that it never came into my head to have any. I can solemnly aver, that 
till the time when I was bound to a master I never knew what it was to 
have a whim. 


Poor lad! “ Never knew what it was to have a whim!” 
It well might be, however—his boy’s life all one whim un- 
crossed, unchecked; no contrast of saving restraint, to make 
him know that he was living by whim alone! 

Young Jean Jacques was at length apprenticed to an en- 
graver. He describes the contrast of his new situation and 
the effect of the contrast upon his own character and career: 


I learned to covet in silence, to dissemble, to dissimulate, to lie, and at 
last to steal, a propensity for which I had never hitherto had the slight- 
est inclination, and of which I have never since been able quite to cure 
myself. . . . 

My first theft was the result of complaisance, but it opened the door to 
others which had not so laudable a motive. ; 

My master had a journeyman named M., Verrat. .. . [He] took it into 
his head to rob his mother of some of her early asparagus and sell it, con- 
verting the proceeds into some extra good breakfasts. As he did not 
wish to expose himself, and not being very nimble, he selected me for 


Rousseau. 217 





this expedition. Long did I stickle, but he persisted, I never could 
resist kindness, so I consented. I went every morning to the garden, 
gathered tie best of the asparagus, and took it to “the Molard,” where 
some good creature, perceiving that I had just heen stealing it, would 
insinuate that little fact, so as to get it the cheaper. In my terror I took 
whatever she chose to give me and carried it to M. Verrat. 

This little domestic arrangement continued for several days before it came 
into my head to rob the robber, and tithe M. Verrat for the proceeds of 
the asparagus. ... I thus learned that to steal was, after all, not so very 
terrible a thing as I had conceived, and ere long I turned this discovery 
to so guod an account, that nothing I had an inclination for could safely 
be left within my reach.... 

And now, before giving myself over to the fatality of my destiny, let 
me, for a moment, contemplate what would naturally have been my lot 
had I fallen into the hands of a better master. Nothing was more agree- 
able to my tastes, nor better calculated to render me happy, than the 
calm and obscure condition of a good artisan, more especially in certain 
lines, such as that of an engraver at Geneva....In my native country, 
in the bosom of my religion, of my family, and my friends, I should have 

. led a life gentle and uncheckered as became my character, in the uniform- 
ity of a pleasing occupation and among connections dear to my heart. I 
should have been a good ‘Christian, a good citizen, a good father, a good 
friend, a good artisan, and a good man in every respect. I should have 
loved my station; it may be I should have been an honor to it; and after 
having passed an obscure and simple, though even and happy, life, I should 
peacefully have departed in the bosom of my kindred.- Soon, it may be, 
forgotten, I should at least have been regretted as long as the remem- 
brance of me survived. 

Instead of this... what a picture am I about to draw! 


Thus ends the first book of the ‘ Confessions.” 

The picture Rousseau is “about to draw ” has in it a cer- 
tain Madame de Warens for a principal figure. This lady, 
a Roman Catholic convert from Protestantism, had forsaken 
a husband, not loved, and was living on a bounty from King 
Victor Amadeus of Sardinia. For Annecy, the home of 
Madame de Warens, our young Jean Jacques, sent thither 
by a Roman Catholic curate, sets out on foot. The distance 
was but one day’s walk; which one day’s walk, however, the 
humor of the wanderer stretched into a saunter of three 
days. The man of fifty-four, become the biographer of his 


own youth, finds no lothness of self-respect to prevent his 
10 


218 Classic French Course in English. 





detailing the absurd adventures with which he diverted 
himself on the way. For example : 

Not a country-seat could I see, either to the right or left, without going 
after the adventure which I was certain awaited me. I could not muster 
courage to enter the mansion, nor even to knock, for I was excessively 
timid; but I sang beneath the most inviting window, very much aston- 
ished to find, after wasting my breath, that neither lady nor miss made her 
appearance, attracted by the beauty of my voice, or the spice of my songs 
—seeing that I knew some capital ones that my comrades had taught me, 
and which I sang in the most admirable manner. 

Rousseau describes the emotions he experienced in his first 
meeting with Madame de Warens: 

Thad pictured to myself a grim old devotee—M. de Pontverre’s “ worthy 
lady” could, in my opinion, be none other. But lo, a countenance beam- 
ing with charms, beautiful, mild blue eyes, a complexion of dazzling fuir- 
ness, the outline of an enchanting neck! Nothing escaped the rapid 
glance of the young proselyte; for that instant I was hers, sure that a 
religion preached by such missionaries could not fail to lead to paradise! 
This abnormally susceptible youth had remarkable expe- 

riences, all within his own soul, during his sojourn, of a few 
days only, on the present occasion, under Madame de Wa- 
rens’s hospitable roof. These experiences, the autobiographer, 
old enough to call himself ‘old dotard,” has, nevertheless, 
not grown wise enough to be ashamed to be very detailed 
and psychological in recounting. It was a case of precocious 
love at first sight. One could afford to laugh at it as ridicu- 
lous, but that it had a sequel full of sin and of sorrow. Jean 
Jacques was now forwarded to Turin, to become inmate of a 
‘sort of charity school for the instruction of catechumens. 
The very day after he started on foot, his father, witha friend 
of his, reached Annecy on horseback, in pursuit of the truant 
boy. They might easily have overtaken him, but they let 
him go his way. Rousseau explains the case on behalf of his 
father as follows : 


My father was not only an honorable man, but a person of the most re- 
liable probity, and endowed with one of those powerful minds that per- 
form deeds of loftiest heroism. I may add, he was a good father, espe- 
cially tome. ‘Tenderly did he love me, but he loved his pleasures also; 
and, since our living apart, other ties had, in a measure, weakened his 


Rousseau. 219 





- paternal affection. He had married again, at Nyon; and though his wife 
was no longer of an age.to present me with brothers, yet she had connec- 
tions; another family circle was thus formed, other objects engrossed his 
attention, and the new domestic relations no longer so frequently brought 
back the remembrance of me. My father was growing old, and had 
nothing on which to rely for the support of his declining years. My 
brother and I had something coming to us from my mother’s fortune; 
the interest of this my father was to receive during our absence. This 
consideration did not preseut itself to him directly, nor did it stand in the 
way of his doing his duty; it had, however, a silent, and to himself im- 
perceptible, influence, and at times slackened his zeal, which, unacted 
upon by this, would have been carried much farther. This, I think, was 
the reason, that, having traced me as far as Annecy, he did not follow me 
to Chamberi, where he was morally certain of overtaking me. This will 
also explain why, in visiting him many times after my flight, I received 
from him on every occasion a father’s kindness, though unaccompanied 
by any very pressing efforts to retain me. 


Rousseau’s filial regard for his father was peculiar. It did 
not lead him to hide, it only led him to account for, his 
father’s sordidness. The son generalized and inferred a 
moral maxim for the conduct of life from this behavior of the 
father’s—a maxim, which, as he thought, had done him great 
good. He says: 

This conduct on the part of a father of whose affection and virtue I 
have had so many proofs, has given rise within me to reflections on my 
own character which have not a little contributed to maintain my heart 
uncorrupted. I have derived therefrom this great maxim of morality, 
perhaps the only one of any use in practice; namely, to avoid such situ- 
ations as put our duty in antagonism with our interest, or disclose our 
own advantage in the misfortunes of another, certain that in such circum- 
stances, however sincere the love of virtue we bring with us, it will sooner 
or later, and whether we perceive it or not, become weakened, and we 
shall come to be unjust and culpable in our acts without having ceased to 
be upright and blameless in our intentions. 


The fruitful maxim thus deduced by Rousseau, he thinks 
he tried faithfully to put in practice. With apparent per- 
fect assurance concerning himself, he says: 


I have sincerely desired to do what was right. I have, with all the energy 
of my character, shunned situations which set my interest in opposition 
to the interest of another, thus inspiring me with a secret though in- 
voluntary desire prejudicial to that man. 


220 Classic French Course in English, 





Jean Jacques at Turin made speed to convert himself, by 
the abjurations required, into a pretty good Catholic. He 
was hereon free to seek his fortune in the Sardinian capital. 
This he did by getting successively various situations in serv- 
ice. In one of these he stole, so he tells us, a piece of ribbon, 
which was soon found in his possession. He said a maid- 
servant, naming her, gave it to him. The two were con- 
fronted with each other. In spite of the poor girl’s solemn 
appeal, Jean Jacques persisted in his lie against her. Both 
servants were discharged. The autobiographer protests that 
he has suffered much remorse for this lie of his to the harm 
of the innocent maid. Te expresses confident hope that his 
suffering sorrow, already experienced on his behalf, will 
stand him in stead of punishment that might be his due in a 
future state. Remorse is a note in Rousseau that distin- 
guishes him from Montaigne. Montaigne reviews his own 
life to live over his sins, not to repent of them. 

The end of several vicissitudes is, that young Rousseau 
gets back to Madame de Warens. She welcomes him kindly. 
He says: 


From the first day, the most affectionate familiarity sprang up between 
us, and that to the same degree in which it continued during all the rest of 
her life. Petit—Child—was my name, Maman—Mamma—hers; and Petit 
and Maman we remained, even when the course of time had all but ef- 
faced the difference of our ages. These two names seem to me marvel- 
ously well to express our tone toward each other, the simplicity of our 
manners, and, more than all, the relation of our hearts. She was to me 
the tenderest of mothers, never seeking her own pleasure, but ever my 
welfare; and if the senses had anything to do with my attachment for 
her, it was not to change its nature, but only to render it more exquisite, 
and intoxicate me with tle charm of having a young and pretty mamma 
whom it was delightful for me to caress. I say quite literally, to caress; 
for it never entered into her head to deny me the tenderest maternal kisses 
and endearments, nor into my heart to abuse them. Some may say that, 
in the end, quite other relations subsisted between us.. I grant it; but 
have patience—I cannot tell everything at once. 


With Madame de Warens, Rousseau’s relations, as is inti- 
mated above, became licentious. This continued until, after 
un interval of years (nine years, with breaks), in a fit of jeal- 


Rousseau. 221 





ousy he forsook her. Rousseau’s whole life was a series of 
self-indulgences, groveling, sometimes, beyond what is con- 
ceivable to any one not learning of it all in detail from the 
man’s own pen. The reader is fain at last to seek the only 
relief possible from the sickening story, by flying to the con- 
clusion that Jean Jacques Rousseau, with all his genius, was 
wanting in that mental sanity which is a condition of com- 
plete moral responsibility. 

We shall, of course, not follow the “ Confessions ” through 
their disyusting recitals of sin and shame. We should do 
wrong, however, to the literary, and even to the moral, char- 
acter of the work, were we not to point out that there are 
frequent oases of sweetness and beauty set in the wastes of 
incredible foulness which overspread so widely the pages of 
Roussequ’s “Confessions.” Here, for example, is an idyll of 
vagabondage that might almost make one willing to play 
tramp one’s self, if one by so doing might have such an 
experience : 


I remember, particularly, having passed a delicious night without the 
city on a road that skirted the Rhone or the Sadne, for I cannot remember 
which. On the other side were terraced gardens. It had been a very 
warm day; the evening was charming ; the dew moistened the faded grass ; 
a ealm night, without a breeze; the air was cool without being cold; the 
sun in setting had left crimson vapors in the sky, which tinged the water 
with its roseate hue, while the trees along the terrace were filled with 
nightingales gushing out melodious answers to each other’s song. I 
walked along in a species of ecstasy, giving up heart and senses to tlie en- 
joyment of the scene, only slightly sighing with regret at enjoying it 
alone. Absorbed in my sweet reverie, I prolonged my walk far into the 
night, without perceiving that Iwas wearied out. At length I discovered 
it. Ilsy voluptuously down on the tablet of a sort of niche or false door 
suuk in the terrace wall. The canopy of my couch was formed by the 
ovcr-arching bouglis of the trees ; a nightingale sat exactly above me; its 
song lulled me to sleep; my slumber was sweet, and my awaking still 
more so. It was broad day; my eyes, on opening, fell on the water, the 
verdure, and the admirable landscape spread out before me. I arose and 
shook off dull sleep; and, growing hungry, I gayly directed my steps to- 
ward the city, bent on transforming two pieces de six blunes, that I had 
left, into-a good breakfast. I was so cheerful that I went singing along 
the whole way, 


222 Classie French Course in English. 





This happy-go-lucky, vagabond, grown-up child, this sen- 
timentalist of genius, had now and then different experiences 
—experiences to which the reflection of the man grown old 
attributes important influence on the formation of. his most 
controlling beliefs : 


One day, among others, having purposely turned aside to get a closer 
view of a spot that appeared worthy of all admiration, I grew so de- 
lighted with it, and wandered round it so often, that I at length lost my- 
self completely. After several hours of useless walking, weary and faint 
with hunger and thirst, I entered a peasant’s hut which did not present 
a very promising appearance, but it was the only one I saw around. I 
conceived it to be here as at Geneva and throughout Switzerland, where 
all the inhabitants in easy circumstances are in the situation to exercise 
hospitality. I entreated the man to get me some dinner, offering to pay for 
it. He presented me with some skimmed milk and coarse barley bread, 
observing that that was all he had. I drank the milk with @light, and 
ate the bread, chaff and all; but this was not very restorative to a man 
exhausted with fatigue. The peasant, who was watching me narrowly, 
judged of the truth of my story by the sincerity of my appetite. All ofa 
sudden, after having said that he saw perfectly well that I was a-good 
and true young fellow that did not come to betray him, he opened a little 
trap-door by the side of his kitchen, went down and returned a moment 
afterward with a good brown loaf of pure wheat, the remains of a tooth- 
some ham, and a bottle of wine, the sight of which rejoiced my heart 
more than all the rest.. To these he added a good thick omelette, and I 
made such a diuner as none but a walker ever enjoyed. When it came 
to pay, lo! his disquietude and fears again seized him; he would none 
of my money, and rejected it with extraordinary manifestations of dis- 
quiet. The funniest part of the matter was, that I could not conceive 
what he was afraid of. At length, with fear and trembling, he pro- 
nounced those terrible words, Commissioners and Cellar-rats. He gave me 
to understand that he concealed his wine because of the excise, and his 
bread on account of the tax, and that he was a lost man if they got the 
slightest inkling that he was not dying of hunger. Everything he said 
to me touching this matter, whereof, indeed, I had not the slightest idea, 
produced an impression on me that can never be effaced. It became the 
germ of that inextinguishable hatred that afterward sprang up in my heart 
agaiust the vexations to which these poor people are subject, and against 
their oppressors. This man, though in easy circumstances, dared not eat 
the bread he had gained by the sweat of his brow, and could escape 
ruin only by preseuting the appearance of the same misery that reigned 
around him, 


Rousseau. 223 





A hideously false world, that world of French society was, 
in Rousseaw’s time. The falseness was full ripe to be laid 
bare by some one; and Rousseau’s experience of life, as well 
as his temperament and his genius, fitted him to do the work 
of exposure that he did. What one emphatically calls char- 
acter was sadly wanting in Rousseau—how sadly, witness 
such an acted piece of mad folly as the following: 


I, without knowing aught of the matter, ...gave myself out for a 
[musical] composer. Nor was this all: having been presented to M. de 
Freytorens, law professor, who loved music, and gave concerts at his house, 
nothing would do but I must give him asample of my talent; so I set about 
composing a piece for his concert quite as boldly as though I had really 
been an adept in the science. I had the constancy to work for fifteen 
days on this fine affair, to copy it fair, write out the different parts, and 
distribute them with as much assurance as though it had been a master- 
piece of harmony. Then, what will scarcely be believed, but which yet 
is gospel truth, worthily to crown this ‘sublime production I tacked to 
the end thereof a pretty minuet which was then having a run on the 
streets. . . . I gave it as my own just as resolutely as though I had been 
speaking to inhabitants of the moon. 

They assembled to perform my piece.. I explain to each the nature of 
the movement, the style of execution, and the relations of the parts—I 
was very full of business. For five or six minutes they were tuning; to 
me each minute seemed an age. At length, all being ready, I rap with 
a handsome paper bdton on the leader’s desk the five or six beats of the 
“ Make ready.” Silence is made—I gravely set to beating time—they 
commence! No, never since French operas began; was there such a 
charivart heard. Whatever they might have thought of my pretended 
talent, the effect was worse than they could possibly have imagined. The 
musicians choked with laughter; the auditors opened their eyes and 
would fain have closed their ears. But that was an impossibility. My 
tormenting set of symphonists, who seemed rather to enjoy the fun, 
scraped away with a din sufficient to crack the tympanum ‘of one born 
deaf. I had the firmness to go right ahead, however, sweating, it is true, 
at every pore, but held back by shame; not daring to retreat, and glued 
to the spot. For my consolation I heard the company whispering to each 
other, quite loud enongh for it to reach my ear: “It is not bearable!” 
said one. ‘What music goue mad!” cried another. ‘‘ What a devilish 
din!” added athird. Poor Jean Jacques, little dreamedst thou, in that cruel 
moment, that one day before the king of France and all the court, thy 
sounds would excite murmurs of surprise and applause, and that in all 
the boxes around thee the loveliest ladies would burst forth with, “ What 


224 . Classie French Course in English. 





charming sounds! what enchanting music! every strain reaches the 
heart!” : 

But what restored every one to good humor was the minuet. Scarcely 
had they played a few measures than I heard bursts of laughter break 
out on all hands. Every one congratulated me on my fine musical taste ; 
they assured me that this minuet would make me spoken about, and that 
I merited the louded praises. I need not attempt depicting my agony, 
nor own that [ well deserved it. . 


Readers have now had an opportunity to judge for them- 
selves, by specimen, of the style, both of the writer and of 
the man Jean Jacques Rousseau. The writer’s style they 
must have felt even through the medium of imperfect anony- 
mous translation, to be a charming one. If they have felt 
the style of the man to be contrasted, as squalor is contrasted 
with splendor, that they must not suppose to be a contrast 
of which Jean Jacques himself, the confessor, was in the least 
displacently conscious. Far from it. In the latter part of 
his “‘ Confessions,” a part that deals with the author as one 
already now acknowledged a power in the world of letters, 
though with all his chief works still to write, Rousseau speaks 
thus of himself (he was considering at the time the ways and 
means available to him of obtaining a livelihood): 


I felt that writing for bread would soon have extinguished my genius, 
and destroyed my talents, which were less in my pen than in my heart, 
and solely proceeded from an elevated and noble manner of thinking. .. . 
It is too difficult to think nobly when we think for a livelihood. 


Is not that finely said? And one need not doubt that it 
was said with perfect sincerity. For our own part, paradox- 
ical though it be to declare it, we are wholly willing to insist 
that Rousseau did think on a lofty plane. The trouble with 
him was, not that he thus thought with his heart, rather than 
with his head—which, however, he did—but that he thought 
with his heart alone, and not at all with his conscience and 
his will. Ina word, his thought was sentiment rather than 
thonght. He was a sentimentalist instead of a thinker. 
One illustration of the divorce that he decreed for him- 
self, or rather—for we have used too positive a form of 


Rousseau. 225 





expression—that he allowed to subsist, between sentiment 
and conduct, will suffice. It was presently to be his fort- 
une, us author of a tract on education (the “ Emile”), to 
change the habit of a nation in the matter of the nurture 
for babes. French mothers of the higher social class in 
Rousseau’s time almost universally gave up their infants to 
be nursed at alien losoms. Rousseau so eloquently de- 
nounced the unnaturalness of this, that from his time it be- 
came the fashion for French mothers to suckle their children 
themselves. Meantime, the preacher himself of this beautiful 
humanity, living in unwedded union with a woman (not 
Madame de Warens, but a woman of the laboring class, found 
after Madame de Warens was abandoned), sent his illegiti- 
mate children, against the mother’s remonstrance, one after 
another, to the number of five, to be brought up unknown 
at the hospital for foundlings! He tells the story himself in 
his “‘ Confessions.” This course on his own part he subse- 
quently laments with many tears and many self-upbraidings. 
But these, alas, he intermingles with self-justifications, nearly 
as many—so that at last it is hard to say whether, the balance 
of his judgment inclines for or against himself in the matter. 
A paradox of inconsistencies and self-contradictions, this man 
—a problem in human character, of which the supposition of 
partial insanity in him, long working subtly in the blood, 
seems the only solution, The occupation finally adopted 
by Rousseau for obtaining subsistence was the copying of 
music. It extorts from one a measure of involuntary respect 
for Rousseau, to see patiently toiling at this slavish work, to 
earn its owner bread, the same pen which had lately set all 
Europe in ferment with the “Emile” and “ The Social Con- 
tract.” 

From Rousseau’s “Confessions,” we have not room to pur- 
vey further. It is a melancholy book—written under mono- 
maniac suspicion on the part of the author that he was the 
object of a wide-spread conspiracy against his reputation, his 
peace of mind, and even his life. The poor, shattered, self- 


consumed sensualist anl sentimentalist paid dear in the 
10* 


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agonies of his closing years for the indulgences of an un- 
regulated life. The tender-hearted, really affectionate, and 
loyal friend came at length to live ina world of his own 
imagination, full of treachery to himself. David Hume, the 
Scotchman, tried to befriend him; but the monomaniac was 
incapable of being befriended. Nothing could be more 
pitiful than were the decline and the extinction that occurred 
of so much brilliant genius, and so much lovable character. It 
is even doubtful whether Rousseau did not at last take his 
own life. The voice of accusation is silenced in the presence 
of an earthly retribution so dreadful. One may not indeed 
approve, but one may at least be free to pity, more than he 
blames, in judging Rousseau. 

Accompanying, and in some sort complementing the ‘‘ Con- 
fessions,” are often published several detached pieces called 
“ Reveries,” or “ Walks.” These are very peculiar compo- 
sitions, and very characteristic of the author. They are 
dreamy meditations or reveries, sad, even somber, in spirit, 
but “ beautiful exceedingly,” in form of expression. Such 
works as the “ René” of Chateanbriand, works but too abun- 
dant since in French literature, must all trace their pedigree 
to Rousseau’s “ Walks.” 

This author’s books in general are now little read. They 
worked their work and ceased. But there are in some of 
them passages that continue to live. Of these, perhaps quite 
the most famous is the “Savoyard Curate’s Confession of 
Faith,” a document of some length, incorporated into the 
«“ Emile.” This, taken as a whole, is the most seductively 
eloquent argument against Christianity that perhaps ever was 
written. It contains, however, concessions to the sublime 
elevation of Scripture and to the unique virtue and majesty 
of Jesus, which are often quoted, and which will bear quot- 
ing here. The Savoyard Curate is represented speaking to a 
young friend as follows:— 

I will confess to you further, that the majesty of the Scriptures strikes 


me with admiration, as the purity of the gospel hath its influence on my 
heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers with all their pomp of dic- 


Rousseau. 227 





tion; how mean, how contemptible, are they, compared with the Scripture ! 
Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime should be merely 
the work of man? Is it possible that the Sacred Personage, whose _his- 
tory it contains, should be himself a mere man?, Do we find that he 
assumed the tone of an enthusiast or ambitious sectary? What sweet- 
ness, what purity, in his manners! What an affecting gracefulness in 
his delivery! What sublimity in his maxims! What profound wisdom in 
his discourses! What presence of mind, what subtilty, what truth, in 
his replies! How great the command over his passions! Where is the 
man, where the philosopher, who could so live and die, without weakness 
and without ostentation? When Plato described his imaginary good man 
loaded with all the shame of guilt, yet meriting the highest reward of _ 
virtue, he described exactly the character of Jesus Christ: the resem- 
blance was so striking that all the Fathers perceived it. 

What prepossession, what blindness, must it be to compare the son of 
Sophronisecus to the Son of Mary! What an infinite disproportion 
there is between them! Socrates, dying without pain or ignominy, 
easily supported his character to the last; and if his death, however 

-easy, had not crowned his life, it might have been doubted whether 
Socrates, with all his wisdom, was anything more than a vain sophist. 
He invented, it is said, the theory of morals. Others, however, had be- 
fore put them in practice; he had only to say what they had done, and 
reduce their examples to precepts. Aristides had been just before Soc- 
rates defined justice; Leonidas gave up his life for his country before 
Socrates declared patriotism to be a duty; the Spartans were a sober peo- 
ple before Socrates recommended sobriety; before he had even defined 
virtue Greece abounded in virtuous men. But where could Jesus learn, 
among his compatriots, that pure and sublime morality of which he only 
has given us both precept and example? The greatest wisdom was made 
known amidst the most. bigoted fanaticism, and the simplicity of the most 
heroic virtues did honor to the vilest people on the earth. The death of 
Socrates, peaceably philosophizing with his friends, appears the most 
agreeable that could be wished for; that of Jesus, expiring in the midst 
of agonizing pains, abused, insulted, cursed by a whole nation, is the most 
horrible that could be feared. Socrates, in receiving the cup of poison, 
blessed indeed the weeping executioner who administered it; but Jesus, 
in the midst of excruciating tortures, prayed for his merciless tormentors. 
Yes, if the life and death of Socrates are those of a sage, the life and death 
of Jesus are those of a God. Shall we suppose the evangelic history a 
mere fiction? Indeed, my friend, it bears not the marks of fiction; on the 
contrary, the history of Socrates, which nobody presumes to doubt, is not 
so well attested as that of Jesus Christ. Such a supposition, in fact, only 
shifts the difficulty without removing it; it is more inconceivable that a 
number of persons should agree to write such a history, than that one 


228 Classic French Course in English. 





only should furnish the subject of it. The Jewish authors were incapa- 

ble of the diction, and strangers to the morality contained in the Gospel, 

the marks of whose truth are so striking and inimitable that the inventor 
would be a more astonishing character than the hero. 

So far in eloquent ascription of incomparable excellence to 
the Bible and to the Founder of Christianity. But then im- 
mediately Rousseau’s Curate proceeds:— 

And yet, with all this, the same Gospel abounds with incredible rela- 
tions, with circumstances repugnant to reason, and which it is impossible 
for a man of sense either to conceive or admit. 


The compliment to Christianity almost convinces you— 
until suddenly you are apprised that the author of the com- 
pliment was not convinced himself! 

Jean Jacques Rousseau, in the preface to his “ Confessions,” 
appealed from the judgment of men to the judgment of God. 
This judgment it was his habit, tothe end of his days, thanks 
to the effect of his early Genevan education, always to think 
of as certainly impending. Let us adjourn our final sentence 
upon him until we hear that Omniscient award. 


In pendant to what we have said and have shown of Rous- _ 
seau, some notice may here properly be given of another cele- 
brated writer, or writer perhaps we should say of a celebrated _ 
book, who stands to Rousseau in the relation of sequel and echo. 
We mean Sr. Pierre, the author of “ Paul and Virginia,” 

This is a very famous little classic. It isa kind of prose 
idyll, a pastoral of lowly and simple life, a life lived by the 
subjects of it in the spirit of return to the conditions of nat- 
ure, such as Jean Jacques Rousseau idealized the conditions 
of nature to be. The author’s own personal experience fur- 
nished him the hint, the ground, and the material, of his bu- 
colic romance. It had happened to St. Pierre, in the course 
of a somewhat fruitless and vagabond life, to be sent in an 
official capacity to Mauritius, or the Isle of France. In this 
remote island, as in a kind of Utopia, the scene of the story 
of “ Paul and Virginia” is laid. 

St. Pierre was already thirty-one years old when he took 


St. Pierre. 229 





his distant voyage; he stayed three years in Mauritius, and 
then he waited sixteen years, becoming therefore, fifty years 
old, before he made use of what he had experienced in pub- 
lishing his romance of “ Paul and Virginia.” He had mean- 
time seen a great deal of Rousseau during the latter’s 
declining years, and from him had learned that art of writing 
by virtue of which he was destined to constitute the second 
of succession in a literary line to be continued after him in 
Chateaubriand and Lamartine, in Madame de Stael aud George 
Sand. 

It is the historical importance thus attaching to St. Pierre’s 
name, even more perhaps than it is the merit and the fame 
of his books, or of his book—for of his books other than 
* Paul and Virginia,” we need not trouble our readers with 
even the titles—that warrants us in listing him, as we do, among 
the select “immortals” of French literature. St. Pierre’s dis- 
tinguishing note was the supposed return to nature and to nat- 
ural unsophisticated sentiment accomplished in his writings. 

But the return, with him, was by no means completely sat- 
isfactory. There was always something unreal in St. Pierre’s 
passion for nature; and the feeling with which he wrote 
seems, to us of to-day, to have been neither very deep nor very 
sincere. Still, all was accepted and was highly effective in 
its time; Europe was flooded with tears in reading “ Paul and 
Virginia,” much as afterward it was flooded with tears in 
reading an equally notable, but far less wholesome book, that 
prose masterpiece of the youthful Goethe, “The Sorrows of 
Werther.” The “Corinne” of Madame de Stael afterward, 
later the “Jocelyn” of Lamartine, later again the passionate 
earlier novels of George Sand, served to their respective fresh 
generations of readers a somewhat similar office, that of stimu- 
lating and of expressing the vague longing and aspiration of 
youth, 

The plot of “ Paul and Virginia” is simplicity itself. Two 
young French widows—widows we may euphemistically call 
the women both, though the mother of Paul had never 
been married—meet, strangers to each other, in Mauritius, 


230 Classic French Course in English. 





and their children, Paul and Virginia respectively, grow up 
from babyhood together, as if brother and sister, in a state 
of nature such as never was anywhere in the world outside 
of a romance, until at last, Virginia undertaking a vain voy- 
age to France to bring round a rich alienated aunt of her 
mother’s, perishes by shipwreck on her return; in prompt 
sequel of which calamity, all the remaining personages of the 
tale, down to the very dog, naturally and sentimentally, one 
after another, die. The story is represented as told to a 
traveler in the Isle of France by a sympathetic old man who 
had been an eye-witness of all. 

Two extracts, one from the beginning, and one from the 
end, of the romance, will sufficiently indicate its quality. 

Paul and Virginia being now about twelve years of age, 
Viginia goes, accompanied by Paul, to restore to the master 
a runaway female slave to whom he had been cruel, and to 
intercede with him on the sufferer’s behalf. She has accom- 
plished her purpose, and the two have set out to return. 
They lose their way. This is the state of the case at the 
point at which our first extract begins, as follows: 

*‘ God will have pity on us,” replied Virginia; “ he listens to the voice of 
the little birds which ask liim for food.” She had scarcely uttered these 
words when they heard the noise of water falling from a neighboring rock. 
They hastened to it, and, after having quenched their thirst at this spring 
clearer tlian crystal, they gathered and ate a few cresses which grew on 
its banks. As they were looking around them to find some more substan- 
tial nourishment, Virginia descried a young palm-tree among the trees 
of the wood, The cabbage which is found at the top of this tree, inclosed 
within its leaves, is an excellent food; butralthough its stalk is not thicker 
than a man’s leg it was more than sixty feet high. The wood of this tree 
is indeed composed only of a collection of filaments; but its internal bark 
is so hard that it blunts the sharpest hatchets, and Paul had not even a 
knife. He thought of setting fire to this palm-tree at its foot. Another 
difficulty—he had no steel to strike fire with, and besides, in this island 
so covered with rocks, I do not believe it would be possible to jind a 
single flint. Necessity inspires industry, and often the most useiul in- 
ventions have come from men reduced to extremity. Paul resolved to 
light a fire after the manner ofthe negroes, With the sharp end of a stone 
he made a small hole in the branch of a tree that was very dry, which he 
placed under his feet; le then with the edge of the stone made a point 


St. Pierre. 231 





to another branch equally dry, but of a different kind of wood. He next 
placed the piece of pointed wood in tht small hole of the branch which 
was under his feet, and turning it rapidly round in his hands, as one 
turns a mill to froth chocolate, he in a few moments perceived smoke and 
sparks arise from the point of contact. He collected together dry herbs 
and other branches of trees, and set fire to the foot of the palm-tree, 
which soon afterward fell with a violent noise. The fireserved him also 
in stripping the cabbage of the long woody and prickly leaves which en- 
closed it. Virginia and he ate a part of this cabbage raw, and the rest 
cooked in the ashes, and they found them equally agreeable to the taste. . . 
After theirmeal . . . an hour of walking brought them to the banks of s 
large river, which barred their way. . . . The noise of its waters terrified 
Virginia; she dared not try to fordit. Paul accordingly took Virginia 
on his back, and passed thus laden over the slippery rocks of the river, 
regardless of the turbulence of the waters. ‘Fear not,” said heto her; 
“T feel myself very strong with you.” . . . When Paul had passed over, 
and was on the bank, he wished to continue his journey laden with his 
sister, flattering himself that he could ascend in that manner the mountain 
of the Three Peaks, which he saw before him at the distance of half a 
league; but his strength soon began to fail, and he was obliged to set her 
on the ground and to throw himself down beside her... . Virginia 
plucked from an old tree, which hung over the banks of the river, some 
long leaves of hart’s tongue which hung down from its trunk. She made 
of these a kind of buskins with which she bound her feet, which the 
stones of the way had caused to bleed, for in her hurry to do good she 
had forgotten to put on her shoes. Feeling herself relieved by the fresh- 
ness of the leaves she broke off a branch of bamboo and began to walk, 
leaning with one hand on the cane and with the other on her brother. 

In this manner they walked on slowly through the woods; but the 
height of the trees and the thickness of their foliage made them soon lose 
sight of the mountain of the Three Peaks, by which they had directed 
themselves, and even of the sun, which was already setting. After some 
time they quitted, without perceiving it, the beaten path which they had 
till then followed, and found themselves in a labyrinth of trees, shrubs, and 
rocks, which had no farther outlet. Paul made Virginia sit down, and 
ran almost distracted in search of a path out of this thick wood; but he 
wearied himselfin vain. Heclimbed to the top of a lofty tree, to discover 
at least the mountain of the Three Peaks, but he could perceive nothing 
around him but tops of trees, some of which were illuminated by the 
last rays of the setting sun. Already the shadow of tle mountains 
covered the forests in the valleys; the wind was going down, as is usual 
at sunset; a profound silence reigned in these solitudes, and no noise was 
heard but the cry of the stags who came to seek repose in these unfre- 
quented recesses. Puul, in the hope that some hunter might hear him, 


232 Classie French Course in English. 





cried out as loud as he could: ‘Come! Come! and help Virginia!” But” 
- only the echoes of the forest answéred to his voice and repeated several 
times successively: ‘ Virginia! Virginia!” 

Paul now descended from the tree, overcome with fatigue and disap- 
pointment;... he began to weep. Virginia said to him: ‘ Do not weep, my 
dear, unless you wish to overwhelm me with grief... . O! I have been 
very imprudent.” And she began to shed tears. Nevertheless, she said 
to Paul, “ Let us pray to God, my brother, and he will have pity on us.”. 
Scarcely had they finished their prayer when they heard the barking of 
adog.... “I believe,” said Virginia, “it is Fidéle, our house-dog.” 


Of course all turned out happily.. A rescue party had come 
in search of the estray, and they were soon brought with 
rejoicing home. 

Such as the foregoing passage will have served to show 
is the charm of unfallen simplicity and innocence represented 
by St. Pierre to have been cast, forming as if an Eden in 
the wilderness, about these happy children of nature on 
whom society had had no chance to exercise its baneful 
power. ‘True, they suffered, though in Eden. True, others 
sinned, as well as suffered, about them, for there was slavery 
and there was cruelty; but that was in the wilderness outside; 
in Eden they did not sin. It was all Rousseauism in ex- 
periment and reduced to absurdity. By Rousseauism we 
indicate the doctrinal dream of that dreamer ; by no means | 
the actual waking practice of the man that dreamed. 

It may seem a strange marring of the idea of a sufficiency 
in nature, let nature but be unhindered by society, to renew 
the world in the purity of paradise, that the end of the idyll 
of Paul and Virginia should have come about through an 
effort on the part of Virginia’s mother, made quite in the 
spirit of the present artificial order of things, to secure a be- 
quest from an aunt of hers in France, whom the niece had 
offended by marrying as she did; but so it was. Virginia 
undertakes the necessary voyage, and, as we have already 
said, perishes by shipwreck on the coast of Mauritius in 
returning. The heart-rending agony of the final catastrophe 
we have no space to exhibit. The author seems to hint that - 
Virginia might have been saved, could she have brought 


St. Pierre. 233 





herself to assent to the desire of an entreating honest stal- 
wart seaman that she should disembarrass her person of her 
clothes. It is almost the step taken from the sublime to the 
ridiculous for the author to make his heroine perish thus as a 
martyr to her own invincible modesty. 

The bereaved mother has visions of her departed daughter’s 
accomplished felicity in the world unseen. These she describes 
to the neighbor, who, a venerable old man, tells the traveler the 
tale. Now for the final extract from the text of the book: 


“OQ my worthy neighbor!” said she [Paul’s mother] to me [the old 
man who tells the whole story]: “I thought last night I beheld Vir- 
ginia clothed in white, in the midst of groves and delicious gardens. She 
said to me: ‘I enjoy the most desirable happiness.’ Then she ap- 
proached Paul with a smling air and bore him away with her. As I 
endeavored to retain my son I felt that I myself was quitting the earth, 
and that I was following him with inexpressible pleasure. I then wished 
to bid my friend farewell, when I perceived her following us with Mary 
and Domingo. [These are negro slaves of the two mothers.] But what 
seems still more strange is, that Madame de la Tour [Virginia’s mother] 
had the same night a dream attended with similar circumstances.” 

I replied to her,‘ My friend, I believe that nothing happens in the world 
without the permission of God. Dreams do sometimes foretell the truth.” 

Madame de la Tour related to me that the same night she had also had 
a dream entirely similar. I had never observed in these two ladies the 
least propensity to superstition; I was therefore struck with the resem- 
blanee of their dreams, and I had no doubt but that they would be soon 
realized. This opinion, that truth sometimes presents itself to us during 
our sleep, is generally spread among all the nations of the earth. The 
most illustrions men of antiquity have entertained it, amongst others, 
Alexander, Czesar, the Scipios, the two Catos, and Brutus, who were by 
no means inclined to superstition. The Old and the New Testament sup- 
ply us with a variety of examples of dreams that have been realized. . . . 

But whether this opinion concerning dreams be true or not, those of 
my unfortunate friends were speedily realized. Paul died two months 
after the death of his dear Virginia, whose name he incessantly pro- 
nounced. Margaret [Paul’s mother] beheld her end approach a week 
after that of her son with a joy which virtue only can feel. She bade 
Madame de la Tour the most tender farewell, “in the hone,” she said, * of 
a swect and eternal reunion. Death is the greatest of all blessings,” 
added she; “we ought todesire it. Iflife be a punishment we ought to 
wish for its end; if it bea trial, we should wish it short.” 


234 Classie French Course in English. 





The governor took care of Domingo and Mary, who were no longer able 
to labor, and who did not long survive their mistresses. As for poor 
Fidéle, he pined away about the same time as he lost his master. 

I conducted Madame de la Tour to my house. She bore up under these 
heavy afflictions with an incredible fortitude of mind. She had comforted 
Paul and Margaret up to their last moments, as if she had only their 
misfortune to support. When she no longer beheld them, she spoke of 
them every day as of beloved friends who were in the neiglborhood. 
She survived them, however, but a month... . 

The body of Paul was placed by the side of Virginia, at the foot 
of the same bamboos; and near the same spot the remains of their 
tender mothers and their faithful servants were laid. No marble was 
raised over their humble turf, no inscription engraved to celebrate their 
virtues; but their memory remains indelible in the hearts of those whom 
they have assisted. 


If we have treated somewhat lightly this romance of senti- 
mentalism and of naturalism it is because of the taint of 
ungenuineness—that is, of unreality more or less conscious on 
the author’s part—that we seem to ourselves to discover in its 
pages. But the masterpiece of Bernardin de St. Pierre is after 
all a serious literary fact. For instance, if “ Paul and Vir- 
ginia” had never been written it is doubtful if we should 
ever have had that series of romantico-realistio little pieces 
of fiction from the pen of George Sand, out of one of which 
we shall presently exemplify this woman of genius to our 
readers. A production in literature is to be judged not only 
by its own inherent quality, but also, perhaps not less by 
its entail of influence. 

“Paul and Virginia,” in becoming a school-book for the 
learning of French, may be said to have bought increase of 
celebrity at the price of some diminution in fame. In our 
own opinion, however, which, after all that we have suid, 
hardly needs to be thus expressly stated, the book still remains 
quite as famous as its intrinsic merits entitle it to be. Its 
chief security of renown in the future lies, and will continue 
more and more to lie, in the striking fact of its renown in 
the past. 

We formally part with Rousseau and with his first literary 
foster-child. But we shall trace their features still, again 


St. Pierre. 235 





and again, persisting in authors to follow who could not es- 
cape a tell-tale impress, open to all to see, stamped from that 
singularly fecund, and singularly potent, literary paternity. 


an 


XVITTI. 
THE ENCYCLOPADISTS. 


A CENOTAPH is a monument erected to the memory of one 
dead, but not marking the spot in which his remains rest. 
The present chapter is a cenotaph to the French Encyclopx- 
dists. It is in the nature of a memorial of their literary work, 
but it will be found to contain no specimen extracts from 
their writings. 

Everybody has heard of the Encyclopedists of France. 
Who are they? They are a group of men who, during the 
eighteenth century, associated themselves together for the pro- 
duction of a great work to be the repository of all human 
knowledge,—in one word, of an encyclopedia. The project 
was a laudable one; and the motive to it was laudable—in 
part. For there was mixture of motive in the case. In part, 
the motive was simple desire to advance the cause of human 
enlightenment ; in part, however, the motive was desire to 
undermine Christianity. This latter end the encyclopx- 
dist collaborators may have thought to be an indispensable 
means subsidiary to the former end. They probably did 
think so—with such imperfect sincerity as is possible to 
those who set themselves, consciously or unconsciously, 
against God. The fact is, that the Encyclopzdists came at 
length to be nearly as much occupied in extinguishing Chris- 
tianity as in promoting public enlightenment. They went 
about this their task of destroying in a way as effective as 
has ever been devised for accomplishing a similar work. 
They gave a vicious turn of insinuation against Christianity 
to as many articles as possible. In the most unexpected 
places, throughout the entire work, pitfalls were laid of anti- 


236 Classie French Course in English. 





Christian implication, awaiting the unwary feet of the ex- 
plorer of its pages. You were nowhere sure of your ground. 
The world has never before seen, it has never seen since, an 
example of propagandism altogether so adroit and so alert. 
It is not too much to say further that history can supply few 
instances of propagandism so successful. The Encyclope- 
dists might almost be said to have given the human mind a 
fresh start and a new orbit. The fresh start is, perhaps, 
spent ; the new orbit has at length, to a great extent, re- 
turned upon the old; but it holds true, nevertheless, that the 
Encyclopedists of France were for a time, and that not a 
short time, a prodigious force of impulsion and direction to 
the Occidental mind. It ought to be added that the aim of 
the Encyclopedists was political also, not less than religious. 
In truth, religion and politics, Church and State, in their day, 
and in France, were much the same thing. The “ Encyclo- 
pedia” was as revolutionary in politics as it was atheistic in 
religion. 
The leader in this movement of insurrectionary thought 
was Denis Dipgror, Diderot (1713-1784) was born to be an 
encyclopedist, and a captain of encyclopedists. Force in- 
exhaustible, and inexhaustible willingness to give out force ; 
unappeasable curiosity to know ; irresistible impulse to im- 
part knowledge; versatile capacity to do every thing, car- 
ried to the verge, if not carried beyond the verge, of incapac- . 
ity to do anything thoroughly well; quenchless zeal and 
quenchless hope ; levity enough of temper to keep its subject 
free from those depressions of spirit and those cares of con- 
science which weigh and wear on the overearnest man ; 
abundant physical health—gifts such as these made up the 
manifold equipment of Diderot for rowing and steering the 
gigantic enterprise of the “ Encyclopedia ” triumphantly to 
the port of final completion, through many and many a zone of 
stormy adverse wind and sea, traversed on the way. Dide- 
rot produced no signal independent and original work of his 
own; probably he could not have produced such a work. 
On the other hand, it is simply just to say that hardly any- 


The Encyclopedists. 237 





body but Diderot could have achieved the “Encyclopedia.” 
That, indeed, may be considered an achievement not more to 
the glory than to the shame of its author; but whatever its 
true moral character, in whatever proportion shameful or 
glorious, it is inalienably and peculiarly Diderot’s achieve- 
ment—at least in this sense, that without Diderot the “ En- 
cyclopedia ” would never have been achieved. 

We have already, in discussing Voltaire, adverted suffi- 
ciently to Mr. John Morley’s volumes in honor of Diderot 
and his compeers. Diderot is therein ably presented in the 
best possible light to the reader; and we are bound to say 
that, despite Mr. Morley’s friendly endeavors, Diderot therein 
appears very ill. He married a young woman whose simple 
and touching self-sacrifice on her husband’s behalf he pres- 
ently requited by giving himself away, body and soul, to a 
rival. In his writings he is so easily insincere that not uufre- 
quently it is a problem, even for his biographer, to decide 
when he is expressing his sentiments truly and when not, 
insomuch that, once and again, Mr. Morley himself is obliged 
to say, “ This is probably hypocritical on Diderot’s part,” or 
something to that effect. As for filthy communication out 
of his mouth and from his pen—not, of course, habitual, but 
occasional—the subject will not bear more than this mention. 
These be thy gods, O Atheism! one, in reading Mr. Morley 
on Diderot, is tempted again and again to exclaim. To off- 
set such lowness of character in the man it must in justice 
be added that Diderot was, notwithstanding, of a generous, 
uncalculating turn of mind, not grudging, especially in intel- 
lectual relations, to give of his best to others, expecting 
nothing again. Diderot, too, as well as Voltaire, had his royal 
or imperial friends, in the notorious Empress Catherine of 
Russia, and in King Stanislaus of Poland. He visited Cath- 
erine once in her capital, and was there munificently enter- 
tained by her. She was regally pleased to humor this gentle- 
man of France, permitting him to bring down his fist in 
gesture violently on the redoubtable royal knee, according to 
a pleasant way Diderot had of emphasizing a point in familiar 


238 Classic French Course in English. 





conversation. His truest claim to praise for intellectual supe- 
riority is, perhaps, that he was a prolific begetter of wit in 
other men. 

D’AtEemBerT (Jean le Rond, 1717-1783) was an eminent 
mathematician. Ile wrote especially, though not at first ex- 
clusively, on mathematical subjects for the “ Encyclopedia.” 
He was, indeed, at the outset, published as mathematical ed- 
itor of the work. His European reputation in science made 
his name a tower of strength to the “ Encyclopedia,”—even 
after he ceased to be an editoral coadjutor in the enterprise. 
For there came a time when D’Alembert abdicated respon- 
sibility as editor and left the undertaking to fall heavily on 
the single shoulder, Atlantean shoulder it proved to be, of 
Diderot. The celebrated “ Preliminary Discourse,” prefixed 
to the “ Encyclopedia,” proceeded from the hand of D’Alem- 
bert. This has always been esteemed a masterpiece of com- 
prehensive grasp and lucid exposition. A less creditable con- 
tribution of D’Alembert’s to the “ Encyclopzdia ” was his 
article on “Geneva,” in the course of which, at the instance 
of Voltaire, who wanted a chance to have his plays repre- 
sented in that city, he went out of his way to recommend to the 
Genevans that they establish for themselves a theater. This 
brought out Rousseau in an eloquent harangue against the 
theater as exerting influence to debauch public morals. 
D’Alembert, in the contest, did not carry off the honors of 
the day. D’Alembert’s “ Eloges,” so called, a series of char- 
acterizations and appreciations written by the author in his 
old age, of members of the French Academy, enjoy deserved 
reputation for sagacious inteilectual estimate, and for clear, 
though not supremely elegant, style of composition. 

Diderot and D’Alembert are the only men whose names 
appear on the title-page of the “ Encyclopedia ;” but Vol- 
taire, Rousseau, Turgot, Helvétius, Duclos, Condillac, Buffon, 
Grimm, D’Holbach, with many others whom we must not 
stay even to mention, contributed to the work. 

The influence of the “ Encyclopedia,” great during its day, 
is by no means yet exhausted. But it is an influence indi- 


The Encyclopedists. 239 





rectly exerted, for the “Encyclopsedia” itself has long been 
an obsolete work. 

There is a legal maxim that the laws are silent when a 
state of war exists. Certainly, amid the madness of a revolu- 
tion such as, during the closing years of the eighteenth cent- 
ury, the influence of Voltaire, Rousseau, and the Encyclo- 
pedists, with Beaumarchais, reacting against the accumulated 
political and ecclesiastical oppressions of ages, precipitated 
upon France, it might safely be assumed that letters would 
be silent. But the nation meantime was portentously pre- 
paring material for a literature which many wondering cent- 
uries to follow would occupy themselves with writing. 


XIX. . 
MADAME D= STAEL. 
1766-1817. 


In Madame de Stacl we encounter a truly redoubtable fig- 
ure in literature. 

But Madame de Stael in her day seemed more than a writer, 
more even than a writer of what the Germans would call 
world-importance; she was, or she seemed, a prodigious living 
personal force. For her tongue was not less formidable than 
her pen. In truth, the fame of Madame de Stael is due to 
the twofold power which, during her life-time, she exercised, 
and exercised in very uncertain proportions, first perhaps as 
a talker and second as a writer. She is generally allowed, 
and that upon the most incontestable authority, to have been 
one of the most brilliant and most effective talkers in the his- 
tory of the human race. 

This power in Madame de Stael of personal impression you 
are not free to ascribe to any charm that she owned of 
physical beauty; for Madame de Stael was not a beautiful 
woman. By her friend, Madame Récamier, that charm was 
exercised to the full, and that charm Madame de Stael, 


240 Classic French Course in English. 





did. not despise. So far from it, she is said once (thus 
at least the present writer seems to remember, but he has 
been unable to verify his impression) passionately to have 
exclaimed that she would give all her genius for one evening 
of Madame Récamier’s beauty. This was not the vanity 
on her part of wish to be admired. It was the pathos 
of longing to be loved. ‘“ Never, never,” she cried out in 
anguish, “I shall never be loved as I love.” She was 
true woman after all; and it would be inexpiable wrong 
against her not to say this also, and say it with emphasis, 
however sharply we may be just in pronouncing the mas- 
culine strength of her character. The contrast was so 
obvious between Madame de Stael and Madame Récamier in 
point of mere personal charm that, in a moment evil for him, 
a gentleman once seated between them permitted himself the 
awkwardness of saying, in ill-advised intention of compliment 
to both, but with most unhappy chief effect to the contrary, 
alike on this side and on that, ‘‘ How fortunate! I sit between 
Wit and Beauty.” “Yes, and without possessing either the 
one or the other,” retorted Wit, amply avenging herself for 
being reminded that she was not also Beauty. Madame de 
Stael had certainly justified one half of the gentleman’s com- 
pliment; and Madame Récamier, with her serene ineffable 
charm, did not need to speak in order to justify the other, 
It was, then, by the pure dry light of her intellect and her 
wit that Madame de Stael dazzled so in conversation—daz- 
zled so, and so attracted. Wherever she was, there was the 
center. She made a salon anywhere, by simply being there. 
And Madame de Stael’s salon was felt by the ruler of Eu- 
rope to be a formidable political power implacably hostile 
to himself. “Somehow,” said Napoleon, “I observe that, 
whatever is talked about at Madame de Stael’s, those who 
go there come away thinking less favorably of me.”- It 
seems to have been in part because she said nothing, and 
would say nothing, of Napoleon in her “Germany,” that 
he finally suppressed that book. ‘ You will speak ill of me 
when you get back to your academy,” said to Plato the ty- 


Madame de Stael. 241 





rant of Syracuse. “In the academy we shall not have time 
to speak of you at all,” was the philosopher’s reply. 

Madame de-Stael was singularly fortunate in heredity on 
both sides of her parentage. Her father was an eminent 
banker and minister of finance, who enjoyed the noblest and 
clearest renown as a man both of talent and of character. 
Her mother was that beautiful and gifted daughter of a Swiss 
pastor whom the historian Gibbon once thought he loved, 
but whom he dutifully gave up at the will of his father. 
“TI sighed as a lover and obeyed as a son,” Gibbon says in 
his “ Autobiography.” This was after years had passed with 
him—“ years that bring the philosophic mind!” 'The obese 
but famous English historian, still a bachelor, was a frequent 
guest at the house of M. Necker, where he had the opportu- 
nity gallantly to admire the brilliant daughter of the woman 
who might have been his wife, 

_We have said enough to show that, with the exception of 
personal beauty, Madame de Stael enjoyed every external ad- 
vantage that could help to give her a shining career. Her 
wealth was something more than a mere accessory advan- 
tage; she needed it to sustain her in the waste of money made 
necessary by her wanderings through Europe to escape the 
tyrannous hand of Napoleon, Her exile was agony to her, for 
she loved France, and she loved Paris with inextinguishable 
affection. It is impossible to deny to the obstinacy that refused 
to burn even a pinch of incense to the god of her nation’s 
idolatry, for the sake of permission to return to every thing 
that she loved—it is impossible, we say, to deny to this obsti- 
nacy in Madame de Stael the title of a true and heroic virtue. 

How costly-brave was the attitude that Madame de Stael 
steadfastly kept toward Napoleon, during the fifteen years of 
his unparalleled sway, may be guessed from the account that 
she gives of the unnerving, the prostrating effect upon her 
of the presence, the character, and the genius of that ex- 
traordinary man. In her “ Reflections on the French Revolu- 
tion” she has the following passage, almost equally striking 


whether taken as a description or as a confession: 
ll 


$42 Classic French Course in English. 





Far from gaining re-assurance in meeting Buonaparte oftener, he intimi- 
dated me daily more and more. I confusedly felt that no emotion of the 
heart could possibly take effect upon him. Helooks upon a human being 
as a fact or as a thing, but not as a fellow-creature. He does not hate 
any more than he loves; there is nothing for him but himself; all other 
beings are so many ciphers. The force of his will lies in the imperturba- 
ble calculation of his selfishness. . . . His successes are as much to be 
credited to the qualities which he lacks as to the talents which he possesses. 
Neither pity, nor attraction, nor religion, nor attachment to any idea what- 
soever, could make him swerve from the main path he had chosen. Every 
time I heard him talk I was struck with his superiority; this, however 
had no resemblance to the superiority of men trained and cultivated by 
study or by society, a class of which England and France can offer ex- 
amples. But his courses of remark indicated a tact for seizing upon cir- 
cumsfances like that which the hunter has for seizing upon his prey. 
Sometimes he recounted the political and military incidents of his life ina 
manner to interest greatly; he had even, in narrations that admitted 
gayety, a trace of Italian imagination. Still, nothing could get the better 
of my revulsion for what I perceived in him. I felt, in his soul, a sword, 
cold and cutting, that froze while it wounded; I felt, in his mind, a funda- 
mental irony from which nothing great, nothing beautiful, not his own glory 
even, could escape; for he despised the nation whose suffrages he sought; 
and no single spark of enthusiasm mixed with his wish to astonish mankind. 

It was during the interval between the return of Buonaparte (from Italy), 
and his setting out for Egypt toward the end of 1787, that I several times 
saw him in Paris; and never could I overcome the difficulty which I ex- 
perienced in breathing in his presence. I was one day seated at table be- 
tween him and the Abbe Sieyés; singular situation, could I have foreseen 
the future! [Sieyés, two years later, became one in a triumvirate of “ con- 
suls,” of whom Napoleon was another.] I scrutinized carefully the face 
of Napoleon; but every time he detected my observing glances he had 
the art to rob his eyes of all expression, as if they were changed to mar- 
ble. His countenance was then immobile, save a vague smile that he 
brought upon his lips at a venture, in order to throw out any one who 
might wish to mark the external signs of his thought. 


It was not a light thing, and Madame de Stael did not feel 
it a light thing, to hold out as she did, never once dipping 
her colors, against the will and the power of the man whom 
she thus describes. 

This passionate woman of genius, twice linked by mar- 
riage in a union marked by violent and opposite disparities 
of age—for the second husband was as much younger as the 


Madame de Stael. 243 





first was older than she—sought satisfaction for her hungry de- 
sire of love in “ relations,” if not ambiguous, at least apparently 
ambiguous, with men other than her husbands. One of these 
men was Benjamin Constant, whose conversational powers, 
exercised in partnership, never in rivalship, with Madame de 
Stael, helped make the society in which they shone as twin 
stars together, the admiration, the envy, the despair, of cul- 
tivated Europe. Benjamin Constant, as Madame de Stael’s 
companion of travel in Germany, was no doubt part, though 
August Wilhelm Schlegel was part still greater, of the vital- 
izing intellectual influence that helped her produce her work 
on that country. Schlegel, by the way, had previously ac- 
companied Madame de Stael in that Italian tour and sojourn 
of hers, the fruit of which was the novel, or the book of trav- 
els, or both in one, entitled “ Corinne.” This book was the 
first of her books to give its author a European fame. Besides 
being studied as a text-book in the schools, “ Corinne ” is still 
read as a production important in literary history. 

The “De l’Allemagne ” (literally “ Concerning Germany ”) 
is generally esteemed the masterpiece of its author. From 
this we draw our illustrations by specimen of the literary 
quality of Madame de Stael. The “ Germany ” may be said 
to have first introduced that country to France, almost to 
Europe in general. Its scope is comprehensive. It describes 
Germany in a great variety of aspects; but it is on the liter- 
ature of Germany that it expends its strength. 

Madame de Stael’s “ Preface” to her “ Germany,” written 
in England, where, after its arbitrary suppression in France, 
the volume was finally published, is an interesting bit of 
reading. Witness one or two extracts: 

My bookseller took upon himself the responsibility of the publication 
of my book, after submitting it to the censors. .. . 

At the moment when the work was about to appear, and when the 
10,000 copies of the first edition had been actually printed off, the min- 
ister of the police, known under the name of General Savary, sent his 
officers to the bookseller’s, with orders to tear the whole edition in 
pieces, and to place sentinels at the different entrances to the warehouse, 
for fear a single copy of this dangerous writing should escape. 


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What a glimpse is there incidentally afforded of the intol- 
erable despotism of Napoleon! 

Madame de Stael thinks silently of her lovely and beloved 
friend Madame Récamier, who had suffered from Napoleon by 
her relation with the exiled woman of letters, when still in her 
preface she writes : 

Some of my friends were banished, because they had had the generosity 
to come and see me; this was too much: to carry with us the contagion 
of misfortune, not to dare to associate with those we love, to be afraid to 
write to them, or pronounce their names, to be the object by turns, 
either of affectionate attentions which make us tremble for those who 
show them, or of those refinements of baseness which terror inspires, is 
a situation from which every one, who still values life, would withdraw ! 


We advance into the body of the work. 

The German Lessing had himself found in his literary 
countrymen the same fault that Madame de Stael, near the 
beginning of her book, points out as follows: 

In literature, as in politics, the Germans have too much respect for. 
foreigners, and not enough of national prejudices. In individuals it is a 
virtue, this denial of self, and this esteem of others; but the patriotism 
of nations ought to be selfish. 


Bismarck and Von Moltke in politics and war, Herman 
Grimm, for example, in literature, with his appalling claim 
for Goethe’s “ Faust,” as the “ greatest work of the great- 
est poet of all nations and times,” have lately “changed all 
that.” The fault of Germany now is not over-modesty. 

The boundless freedom, nay, audacity, of speculative 
thought indulged by the Germans is stimulantly contrasted 
with their strangely contented subserviency (which then was) 
in more material matters. The sentence we italicize below 
was canceled by Napoleon’s censors, before their master took 
the shorter method of canceling the book: 

The enlightened men of Germany dispute vehemently among them- 
selves the dominion of speculations, and will suffer no shackles in this 
department ; but they give up, without difficulty, all that is real in life to 
the powerful of the earth. This real in life, so disdained by them, finds, 
however, those who make themselves possessors of it, and these, in the end, carry 
trouble and constraint even into the empire of the imagination, 


Madame de Stael. 245 





The following passage concerning Voltaire and a particular 
production of his pen is one of the most trenchantly critical 
expressions that the reader would find in the whole course of 
the “Germany.” The German name of Leibnitz occurring 
in it will suggest the association of contrast by which such a 
criticism of a Frenchman found its way into a book treating 
of things German, Leibnitz had propounded a metaphysical 
theory of universal optimism, which—like all philosophic 
hypotheses, even those apparently least practical, let them 
once become widely entertained—was having its influence on 
national thought and national character. With Voltaire’s 
“Candide” the readers of this volume will already have 
acquired sufficient acquaintance to make Madame de Stael’s 
remarks upon it here presented additionally interesting : 


Voltaire so well perceived the influence that metaphysics exercise over 
the general bias of men’s minds that to combat Leibnitz he wrote Candide. 
He took up a curious whim against final causes, optimism, free will, in short, 
against all the philosophical opinions that exalt the dignity of man; and 
he composed Candide, that work of a diabolical gayety, for it appears to be 
written by a being of a different nature from ourselves, insensible to our 
condition, well pleased with our sufferings, and laughing like a demon or 
an ape at the miseries of that human species with which he has nothing 
in common.:. . : 

Candide brings into action that scoffing philosophy, so indulgent in 
appearance, in reality so ferocious ; it presents human nature under the 
most lamentable point of view, and offers us, in the room of every conso- 
lation, the sardonic grin which frees us from all compassion for others by 
making us renounce it for ourselves. 


When Madame de Stael comes in due course to speak of 
the masterpiece of Goethe, his “ Faust,” she prepares her 
French readers to be shocked with a first disappointment. 
She says : 


Certainly we must not expect to find in it either taste, or measure, or 
the art that selects and terminates, but if the imagination could figure to 
itself an intellectual chaos, such as the material chaos has often been de- 
scribed, the Faust of Goethe should in propriety have been composed at 
that epoch. . . . The drama of Faust certainly is not a good model. Whether 
it be considered as an offspring of the delirium of the mind, or of the 
satiety of reason, it is to be wished that such productions may not be 


246 Classic French Course in English. 





multiplied ; but when such a genius as that of Goethe sets itself free from 
all restrictions the crowd of thoughts -is so great that on every side they 
break through and trample down the barriers of art. 


We close our series of extracts by giving what this most 
brilliant among the French women that have been at the same 
time great talkers and great writers found to say of that high 
art of conversation in which her countrymen surpass the 
world and in which she surpassed her countrymen : 


The bon-mois of the French have been quoted from one end of Europe 
to the other. Always they have displayed the brilliancy of their merit 
and solaced their griefs ina lively and agreeable manner; always they have 
stood in need of one another, as listeners taking turns in mutual encourage- 
ment; always they have excelled in the art of knowing under what 
circumstances to speak, and even under what circumstances to keep 
still, when any commanding interest triumphs over their natural liveliness ; 
always they have possessed the talent of living a quick life, of cutting 
short long discourses, of giving way to their successors who are desirous 
of speaking in their turn; always, in short, they have known how to take 
from thought and feeling no more than is necessary to animate conversa- 
tion without overstaking the feeble interest which men generally feel for 
one another. 

The French are in the habit of treating their own misfortunes lightly 
from the fear of fatiguing their friends; they guess the weariness which 
they would occasion by that which they would experience. . . . The 

‘desire of appearing amiable induces men to assume an expression of 
gayety, whatever may be the inward disposition of the soul; the physi- 
ognomy by degrees influences the feelings, and that which we do for the 
purpose of pleasing others soon takes off the edge of our own individual 
sufferings. 

A sensible woman has said that Paris is, of all the world, the place where 
men can most easily dispense with being happy. [The foregoing italicized 
passage was, Madame de Stael says, “‘suppressed by the literary censor- 
ship under the pretext that there was so much happiness in Paris now 
that there was no need of doing without it.”] ... But nothing can 
metamorphose a city of Germany into Paris. 

- « . To succeed in conversation one must be able clearly to observe 
the impression produced at each moment on people, that which they wish 
to conceal, that which they seek to exaggerate, the inward satisfaction of 
some, the forced smile of others; one may see passing over the countenances 
of those who listen half formed censures which may be evaded by 
hastening to dissipate them before self-love is engaged on their side. One 
may also behold there the first birth of approbation, which may be 


Madame de Stael. 247 





strengthened without, however, exacting from it more than it is willing to 
bestow. There is no arenain which vanity displays itselfin such a variety 
of forms as in conversation, 

I once knew a man who was agitated by praise to such a degree that 
whenever it was bestowed upon him he exaggerated what he had just 
said and took such pains to add to his success that he always ended in 
losing it. I never dared to applaud him from the fear of leading him to 
affectation and of his making himself ridiculous by the heartiness of his 
self-love. Another was so afraid of the appearance of wishing to display 
himself that he let fall words negligently and contemptuously ; his assumed 
indolence only betrayed one more affectation, that of pretending to have 
none, When vanity displays herself, she is good-natured ; when she hides 
herself, the fear of being discovered renders her sour, and she affects 
indifference, satiety, in short, whatever may persuade other men that she 
has no need of them. These different combinations are amusing for the 
observers, and one is always astonished that self-love does not take the 
course, which is so simple, of naturally avowing its desire to please, and 
making the utmost possible use of grace and truth to attain the object. 


There is something in the foregoing strain of ascription 
from Madame de Stael to the social virtues of the French 
which recalls that remarkable character given by Pericles, in 
his noble funeral oration reported by Thucydides, to the 
national spirit and habit of the Athenians in contrast with 
those of their Spartan neighbors and enemies. 

If of Madame de Stael the woman we shall in any respect 
have failed to give a just idea, it will be by not having 
adequately represented the generosity of her character. Her 
desire and her ability to shine should not be permitted, in any 
one’s conception of her, to obscure her fondness and her fit- 
ness for loving and for being loved. Those who knew her 
intimately bear touching testimony to this quality of woman- 
liness in the personal character of Madame de Stael. She was 
fundamentally an amiable, as she was conspicuously a stren- 
uous, spirit, and no mutations in fashion or in taste will ever 
reduce her to less than a great tradition in literature, 


248 Classic French Course in English. 





i b, 
CHATEAUBRIAND. 
1768-1848, 


CHATEAUBRIAND—his is a faded fame. He was a false 
brilliant from the first, but he glittered during his time like 
a veritable Mountain of Light. Men hardly found out till 
he died that instead of being precious stone he was nothing 
but paste. 

Our figure misrepresents the fact. Chateaubriand was not 
thus spurious through and through. WHe had streaks of 
genuine in him, His true symbol perhaps would be a com- 
mon rubble-stone flawed splendidly with diamond. : 

The reaction of disparagement, which is now the critical 
vogue as to Chateaubriand’s personal and literary value, 
meets occasional stout challenge from redoubtable voices, 
Mr, Matthew Arnold, for instance, protests against it, tri- 
umphantly citing out of the author for whom he stands up 
what certainly would read like the utterance of a mind both 
large and noble, could one rid one’s self of the feeling that 
Chateaubriand in writing it had his own case chiefly in view, 
as follows: 

It is a dangerous mistake, sanctioned, like so many other dangerous 
mistakes, by Voltaire, to suppose that the best works of imagination are 
those which draw the most tears. . . . The true tears are those which are 
called forth by the beauty of poetry; there must be as much admiration 
in them as sorrow. 

The author of the foregoing, assuredly, excites with his 
pathos quite as much admiration as sorrow. 

Chateaubriand forms an essential link in the chain of 
literary history for France. He constitutes almost the sole 
representative of French literature for the period of the 
First Empire, so-called—that is, the time of the supreme 
ascendency of Napoleon Bonaparte. Madame de Stael alone 


Chateaubriand. 249 





needs to be named as his rival and peer. Chateaubriand, in 
his day—and his day was a long one, for he outlived the 
empire, the restoration, and the reign of Louis Philippe— . 
_ was well-nigh an equal power with Napoleon himself, In 
his own opinion, he was fully such; for his self-complacency 
was unbounded. 

Never in the history of letters did it twice happen to an 
author to be better served by opportunity than in two cases 
was Chateaubriand. The Encyclopedists, with Voltaire and 
Rousseau, had had their hour, and a reaction had set in, when 
Chateaubriand’s “ Genius of Christianity ” appeared. It was 
the exact moment for such a book. It seemed to create the 
reactionary movement with which it coincided, and it ren- 
dered its author not merely famous, but powerful. Napoleon 
saw his account in making use of a writer who had the secret 
of such popularity. Besides, the Napoleonic sagacity was 
equal to perceiving that return to religious belief was needful 
for France. Napoleon made overtures to Chateaubriand, 
which Chateaubriand accepted. The author took office at the 
gift of the dictator. 

But Chateaubriand was himself too supremely an egotist 
to be securely attached to another egotist’s interest by any 
flattery that could be bestowed upon him. When, at the 
word of Napoleon, the Duke d’Enghien was murdered, 
Chateaubriand—let him have the credit of his high spirit— 
resigned his office and separated himself from the tyrant who 
had conferred it. Chateaubriand’s first happy synchronism 
with the course of events was his publishing the “Genius of 
Christianity ” when he did. His second was his publishing 
the pamphlet “ Bonaparte and the Bourbons” at the very 
moment when that restoration impended which raised Louis 
XVIII. to the throne of France. The new monarch ac- 
knowledged that Chateaubriand’s book had been worth an 
army to his cause. 

Chateaubriand prolonged his literary career to a great age, 
enjoying almost to the end an undisputed supremacy among 


the authors of France. There has seldom been a more 
1y* . 


250 Classic French Course in English. 





uncloudedly, more dazzlingly, brilliant contemporary success 
achieved by any writer of any age or any nation. The re- 
nown continues, but the splendor of the renown has passed 
away. Why? Our answer is, Chateaubriand’s writing is 
vitiated by a vein of unreality, of falseness, running through 
it. This character in his writing but reflected, we fear, a 
character in the writer. There is ground for suspecting that 
Chateaubriand was at heart lacking in genuineness. It was 
inseparable defect in the man that gave that hollow ring to 
the words. It is but a just reprisal upon Chateaubriand that 
his literary fame should suffer by the fault detected in his 
personal character. A man’s words are seldom in the long 
run more weighty than the man. 

Chateaubriand was a kind of continuer and modifier of a 
celebrated French writer that preceded him. He was a. 
better-bred, a much purified, an aristocratic Rousseau. He 
may be pronounced second greatest in the succession of the 
literary sentimentalists of France. 

René Francois Augustus, Viscount de Chateaubriand, to 
give him now his full name and title, lived a life replete with 
adventure and vicissitude. At twenty-three years of age he 
fled from the horrors of the French Revolution to travel in 
America and to find a northwest passage to the Polar Sea. 
He called, with a letter of introduction, on President Wash- 
ington, to whose prudent dissuasion of the young man from 
his project of arctic exploration, founded on the difficulty of 
the task, Chateaubriand had the French readiness, together 
with the necessary egotism, to make the complimentary re- 
ply : “ But, sir, my task is not so difficult as yours was, that 
of creating a state.” In his posthumous biography, the 
“ Memoirs d’ Outre Tombe” [Memoirs from Beyond the 
Tomb], Chateaubriand, alluding to this interview of his with 
Washington, said, sententiously a loftily, “There is a 
virtue in the look of a great man.’ 

Our adventurer never found that north-west passage which 
he came to seek, but he took impressions of a strange new 
world, impressions that he afterward turned to various liter- - 


Chateaubriand. 251 





ary account. His “ René” was one fruit of these experiences 
of his. The “ René” is a romantic and sentimental tale, the 
main interest of which, where it possessed interest, lay in the 
seductive style of the composition, the idealizing descriptions 
occurring in it of American landscape, and the tone of 
melancholy reflection that pervaded it. The “noble red 
man ” is made in it to talk like a Socrates come again, or like 
a French Christian philosopher born “ the heir of all the ages.” 
Such absurd inconsistency with the truth of things well illus- 
trates that taint of lurking falseness which to such a degree 
vitiates all Chateaubriand’s work. 

The French Revolution had made great strides while Cha- 
teaubriand was discovering the north-west passage by mus- 
ing and dreaming in the woods and by the streams of the 
New World. Learning that many members of his social class, 
the aristocracy of France, had fled from their homes and 
were rallying in other lands to make a stand against their 
enemies, Chateaubriand resolved to join them. He was nigh 
to shipwreck on his way. Im a siege, after his arrival, he 
was saved from death by the chance of his having the manu- 
script of his “ Atala” in the right spot on his person to in- 
tercept a ball fromthe enemy. But he was severely wounded 
nevertheless, and, worse still, was attacked with the small- 
pox. Thus disabled, he started on foot to make a journey of 
hundreds of miles. He, of course, suffered many hardships, 
and one night gave up to die in a ditch in which he lay 
down to rest. He was picked up and carried to Namur. 
Here, as he crawled on hands and knees through the streets, 
he was befriended by some women who saw his condition. 
After many adventures, he found himself in London, where 
he lived squalidly on what he could earn by hack-work with 
his pen. 

His family meantime were suffering in France. Some of 
them had actually been guillotined, and some were impris- 
oned, among them his wife, his sister, and his mother. The 
mother died praying for her son’s conversion from infidel 
error. The sister wrote to her brother the pathetic story, 


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but she too had died before her letter reached that brother’s 
hand. “These two voices,” Chateaubriand says, “ coming 
up from the grave, . . . struck me with peculiar force. . . . 
I wept and believed.” The “Genius of Christianity ” was 
written in the spirit of this sentimental conversion of the 
author. 

We pass over, with mere mention of some principal titles, 
his other books, not previously named, as his “Itinerary,” a 
volume of travels ; his “Moses,” his “ Martyrs,” his “ Essay 
on English Literature,” his “Translation of the Paradise 
Lost,” to make the brief extracts for which we have room 
from the “ Genius of Christianity.” 

This work is designed as a manual of Christian evidence, 
an argument for the truth of the Christian religion. It is 
written, of course, from a Roman Catholic point of view, 
but it may be described as liberal and literary, rather than 
strict and ecclesiastical. It is far from being closely reasoned. 
There is, in fact, a great deal of digression and discussion in 
it. The aim of the author was evidently more to make a reada- 
ble book suited to the times than to produce an apologetic 
work that would stand four-square against all hostile attack. 
The author’s question with himself as he wrote seemed to 
have been, not, Is this valid, and necessary to the demonstra- 
tion? but, Will this be interesting ? The consequence is that 
the “Genius of Christianity ”® is now worthy of note rather 
as a book that has had a history than as a book that pos- 
sesses permanent value. It contains, however, writing that 
will satisfactorily exhibit the style of Chateaubriand—a clear, 
pure, brilliant, harmonious poetic prose. 

Chateaubriand raises and answers the question why the 
ancients failed in feeling for the beauties and sublimities of 
nature, thus : 


It can scarcely be supposed that men endued with such sensibility as 
the ancients could have wanted eyes to perceive the charms of nature 
and talents for depicting them, had they not been blinded by some pow- 
erful cause. Now, this cause was their established mythology, which,’ 
peopling the universe with elegant phantoms, banished from the creation 


Chateaubriand. 253 





its solemnity, its grandeur, and its solitude. It was necessary that Chris- 
tianity should expel the whole hosts of fauns, of satyrs, and of nymphs, 
to restore to the grottoes their silence, and to the woods their scope for 
uninterrupted contemplation. Under our religion the deserts have as- 
sumed a character more pensive, more vague, and more sublime; the for- 
ests have attained a loftier pitch; the rivers have broken their petty urns, 
that in future they may only pour the waters of the abyss from the summit 
of the mountains; and the true God, in returning to his work, has im- 
parted his immensity to nature. 


The foregoing, paradoxical perhaps, is certainly a sharp 
turning of the tables upon modern paganizers who mourn 
the dead Greek and Roman divinities of grove and stream. 

Here is a passage in description of nature that every reader 
must acknowledge to be charming. It is throughout thor- 
oughly characteristic of the author. The closing sentence is 
certainly French rather than Hebrew in are eer 
briand rather than David : 


Penetrate into those forests of America coeval with the world. What 
profound silence pervades. these retreats when the winds are hushed! 
What unknown voices when they begin torise! Stand still, and every- 
thing is mute; take but a step, and all nature sighs. Night approaches; 
the shades thicken; you hear herds of wild beasts passing in the dark; 
the ground murmurs under your feet; the pealing thunder roars in the 
deserts; the forest bows; the trees fall; an unknown river rolls before 
you. The moon at length bursts forth in the east; as you proceed at 
the foot of the trees she seems to move before you at their tops and 
solemnly to accompany your steps. The wanderer seats himself on the 
trunk of an oak to await the return of day; he looks alternately at the 
nocturnal luminary, the darkness, and the river: he feels restless, agitated, 
and in expectation of something extraordinary. A pleasure never felt 
before, an unusual fear, cause his heart to throb asif he were about to be 
admitted to some secret of the Divinity ; he is alone in the depths of the 
forest, but the mind of man is equal to the expanse of nature, and all 
the solitudes of the earth are less vast than one single thought of his 
heart. Even did he reject the idea of a deity, the intellectual being, alone 
and unbeheld, would be more august in the midst of a solitary world than 
if surrounded by the ridiculous divinities of fabulous times. The barren 
desert itself would have some congeniality with his discursive thoughts, 
his melancholy feelings, and even his disgust for a life equally devoid of 
illusion and of hope. 

There is in man an instinctive melancholy which makes him harmo- 
nize with the scenery of nature. Who has not spent whole hours seated 


254 Classic French Course in English. 





on the bank of a-river contemplating its passing waves? Who has not 
found pleasure on the sea-shore in viewing the distant rock whitened by 
the billows? How much are the ancients to be pitied, who discovered in 
the ocean naught but the palace of Neptune and the cavern of Proteus! 
It was hard that they should perceive only the adventures of the Tritons 
and the Nereids in the immensity of the seas, which seems to give an 
indistinct measure of the greatness of our souls, and which excites a vague 
desire to quit this life, that we may embrace all nature and taste the full- 
ness of joy in the presence of its author. 


How Roman Catholic, rather than catholic, in tone, is the 
“Genius of Christianity,” the following deliciously ‘written 
sentiment about the Virgin Mary will sufficiently show : 


They who sce nothing in the chaste queen of angels but an obscure 
mystery are much to be pitied. What touching thoughts are suggested 
by that mortal woman, become the immortal mother of a Saviour-God ! 
What might not be said of Mary, who is at once a virgin and a mother, 
the two most glorious characters of woman !—of that youthful daughter of 
ancient Israel; who presents herself for the relief of human suffering, and 
sacrifices a son for the salvation of her paternal race! This tender me- 
diatrix between us and the Eternal, with a heart full of compassion for 
our miseries, forces us to confide in her maternal aid, and disarms the 
vengeance of Heaven. What an enchanting dogma, that allays the terror 
of a God by causing beauty to intervene between our nothingness and 
his Infinite Majesty. 

The anthems of the Church represent the Blessed Mary seated upon a 
pure-white throne more dazzling than the snow. We there behold her 
arrayed in splendor, as a mystical rose, or as the morning star, harbinger 
of the Sun of grace; the brightest angels wait upon her, while celestial 
harps and voices form a ravishing concert around her. In that daughter 
of humanity we behold the refuge of sinners, the cdémforter of the afflicted, 
who, all good, all compassionate, all indulgent, averts from us the anger 
of the Lord. 

Mary is the refuge of innocence, of weakness, and of misfortune. The 
faithful clients that crowd our churches to lay their homage at her feet 
are poor mariners who have escaped shipwreck under her protection, aged 
soldiers whom she has saved from death in the fierce hour of battle, young 
women whose bitter griefs she has assuaged. The mother carries her 
babe before her image, and this little one, though it knows not as yet the 
God of heaven, already knows that divine mother who holds an infant in 
her arms. 


Finally, to illustrate the amusing real lack of logic, mask- 
ing in logical form, of which Chateaubriand was capable, 


Chateaubriand. 255 





we give the syllogistic-looking conclusion that sums up the 
book: 


Christianity is perfect; men are imperfect. 

Now, a perfect consequence cannot spring from an imperfect principle. 
Christianity, therefore, is not the work of men. 

If Christianity is not the work of men, it can have come from none but 

God. 

If it came from God, men cannot have acquired a knowledge of it but 
by revelation. 
Therefore, Christianity is a revealed religion. 

Chateaubriand was long a venerated figure, central in the 
pure and brilliant salon of Madame Récamier, that later 
Marchioness Rambouillet at Paris. His easy airs of patri- 
archal condescension toward the younger generation of 
authors who drew around him there naturally engaged them 
to prolong the long days of his triumphs. But his triumphs 
may be said to have come to an end when Sainte-Beuve was 
ready to pronounce, as he did, that this defender of Christian- 
ity was a skeptic at heart, this preacher and praiser of purity 
was a libertine in life. We will not say that we accept this 
destructive view of Chateaubriand’s character. But we are 
bound to confess that we wish there were more internal evi- 
dence contained in his writings to throw doubt on the justice 
of a sentence so severe. 


Der Maistre (Joseph Marie, 1753-1821), is another author 
who, like Chateaubriand, a little earlier than he, took up a 
polemic for Christianity as represented in Roman Catholi- 
cism, <A truly high and nobly earnest spirit was De Maistre, 
as such contrasting with Chateaubriand, a far deeper and 
far more philosophical thinker than his brilliant compeer, but 
wanting in that grace and seductiveness of style which gave 
to Chateaubriand his life-long wide supremacy in the empire 
of French letters. It would be not incongruous, if there were 
_ room for it in our volume, to prolong this chapter with some 
brief notice and exemplification of De Maistre’s literary work. 
We must content ourselves with this respectful bare mention 
of his name. 


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The proportionately small space in these pages that, in here 
ending our notice of him, we allot to Chateaubriand, fails 
indeed to represent by symbol to the eye the proportionate 
space that he occupies in the literature of his country. But 
it has afforded us fairly adequate opportunity to exhibit in 
description and specimen the chacaceetene quality of his 
literary production. 


xX XT. 
BERANGER. 


1780-1857, 


Bf&RANGER was a song-writer, the whole of him. He was 
a song-writer and nothing else. It is his own word, “My 
songs, they are myself.” 

Béranger was not the rose-crowned lyrist of love and 
wine; he was not Anacreon. Béranger was not the hymner 
of heroes and kings, a maker of odes; he was not Pindar. 
Béranger was not the poet of the world, the gay world 
and the wise; he was not Horace. Béranger was not by 
chance the lowly melodist, who might by chance as well 
have been a lofty bard; he was not Robert Burns. Béran- 
ger was the song-singer of the people; he himself elected 
to be such, and he was by the people elected to be such ; 
he said himself, “My muse is the people.” In one word, 
Béranger was—Béranger. ‘There was none like him before, 
there has been none like him since; Béranger is alone. We 
do not thus praise him, we simply describe him. 

But it is possible to describe him better. We do so by 
borrowing from Victor Hugo through Sainte-Beuve. 

Sainte-Beuve, not in his essay on Béranger (which, in ap- 
preciating, somewhat depreciates the poet), but among the 
interesting things that, under the title “ Chateaubriana,” he 
prints at the close of his monograph in two volumes on 
Chateaubriand, has the following personal recollection of his 
own, which, given here, will serve a threefold purpose ; that 


Béranger. Set 





of hinting incidentally the relation of four celebrated French 
authors to one another, that of illustrating the ready fecund- 
ity and plasticity of Victor Hugo’s genius, and that of 
setting forthin concrete example Béranger’s master method 
in his songs, which master method is essentially Béranger, 
the song-writer, himself. Sainte-Beuve says—of course we 
translate: - 

Victor Hugo, returning one morning from the garden of the Luxem- 
bourg (1828 or 1829) said to me: “If I should see Béranger, I would 
give him the subject of a pretty song. I just now met M. de Chateau- 
briand in the Luxembourg; he did not see me; he was wrapt in thought, 
intently observing some children who, seated on the ground, were playing 
and tracing figures in the sand. If I were Béranger I would make a song 
on the subject: ‘I have been minister, I have been ambassador, etc., I wear 
the decoration of the Order of the Holy Ghost, that of the Order of the 
Golden Fleece, that of the order of St. Andrew, etc.; and one sole thing at 
last amuses me: itis to watch children playing in the sand. I wrote 
“René,” I wrote the “Genius of Christianity,” I stood up against Na- 
poleon, I opened the poetic era of the century, etc.; and I know only one 

thing that amuses me: to watch children at play upon the sand. I have 

seen America, I have seen Greece and Rome, I have seen Jerusalem, etc. 
And after each enumeration of various experiences, forms of greatness or 
of honor, all kept returning still to this: to watch children playing and 
tracing circles in the sand. The plan sketched by Victor Hugo was per- 
fect, far better than I have given it here; but the motive is plain, the 
idea of the refrain. Never have I had better defined to me the difference 
that separates the song, even the most elevatedin character, from the 
ode properly so-called. 

There is Béranger, his whole secret, summed up in small 
by a masterhand. What Béranger, then, did was to choose 
wisely, with long heed, some single, simple, obvious senti- 
ment, appealing to every body’s experience, shut that 
sentiment up into a short, neat, striking, rememberable form 
of words suited to be sung, make of that form of words 
a refrain to recur at intervals, and finally on that. refrain 
build up, one after another to the end, the stanzas of his 
song. He worked slowly and painfully. His genius was 
never very prolific. The time of his chief fruitfulness was 
short, covering only fifteen years, the fifteen years between 
Waterloo (1815) and the elevation of Louis Philippe to the 


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throne of France (1830). During this time his largest prod- 
uct hardly exceeded a dozen songs a year. 

Béranger’s first discipline to his art may be considered to 
have been acertain favorite diversion of his childhood, the 
carving of cherry-stones. This exercise of skill he practiced 
sedulously with delight when a boy, and in it learned the long, 
minute patience of art. The man’s songs were cut gems 
laboriously finished, like the boy’s carvings in cherry-stones. 

Béranger became immensely popular. He remained so to 
the end. When he died, and it was after prolonged silence 
on his part—if one can call silence a period marked, indeed, 
by non-production, but filled with the singing, from land’s 
end to land’s end, of his songs in every mouth—when he died 
the empire buried him and the nation attended his funeral. 
He had been born poor, and he was reared in poverty. Rich 
he would not be, when aman. He took infinite pains to be 
of the people, and he succeeded. The people were loving 
and honoring themselves in loving and honoring Béranger. 
Sainte-Beuve, with that critical incredulity of his, thought 
that Béranger carried his demonstrative cultivation of the 
“people” to the point of something like affectation, Per- 
haps; but the affectation, if it was such, had a sound basis in 
it of real instinctive popular sympathy. Still, Béranger’s 
emphasized identification of himself with the people was not 
all a matter of instinct with him. It was in part a matter 
of deliberately adopted policy. He said: 

The people wanted a man to speak to them the language they love and 


understand, and to create imitators to vary and multiply yersions of the 
same text. J have been that man. 


Béranger was quite willing to make any moral descent 
that might seem to him necessary in order to reach his audi- 
ence. He may have been instinctively, but he was also de- 
liberately, low and lewd in some of his songs. 

Without their help [said he, that is without the help of such immoral 
songs] Iam disposed to think that the others would not have been able 


to go so far, or so low, or even so high; no offense in this last word to 
the virtues of good society. 


Béranger. 259 





_ Even the best of Béranger’s songs lack any thing like lift 
and aspiration. They are conceived in a comparatively low 
tone. The noblest leaven in them is love of France and of 
liberty. Béranger hated the Bourbons; they persecuted him, 
but that only helped him sing them off the throne of France. 
Béranger’s songs did more than any other one individual 
influence, perhaps they did more than all other individual in- 
fluences combined, first to overturn the restored Bourbon 
dynasty after Waterloo, and, second, to bring about the ele- 
vation of Louis Napoleon to power. 

For Béranger was a passionate admirer of the great 
Napoleon. True, he deprecated the exhaustions visited on 
France by the wars of glory which Napoleon waged. But 
that famous piece of his, “The King of Yvetot,” in which 
this deprecation found voice, was a protest so lightly con- 
ceived and at bottom so genial, that the jealousy of Napoleon 
himself could afford to laugh at it. The pieces in which, on 
the contrary, he celebrated the praises of the emperor were 
written with an emotion contagiously vivid. Let us now have 
before us “ The King of Yvetot,” with an appropriate contrast 
to it afterward supplied in one of these encomiastic pieces. 

“Yvetot ” is the name of an ancient French town, situated in 
a seignory the lord of which once enjoyed the nominal rank 
of king. The effect of Béranger’s title to his song is of 
course humorous. The song-writer’s purpose was to draw, 
in the king whom he describes, a whimsical contrast to the 
restless Napoleon. Thackeray furnishes us with a happily 
sympathetic rendering of Béranger’s “King of Yvetot,” as 
follows ; for brevity’s sake we omit one stanza : 


There was a king of Yvetot, 

Of whom renown hath little said, 
Who let all thoughts of glory go, 

And dawdled half his days a-bed ; 
And every night, as night came round, 
By Jenny with a night-cap crowned, 

Slept very sound. 
Sing, ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he! 
That’s the kind of king for me. 


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And every day it came to pass 
That four lusty meals made he, 
And step by step, upon an ass, 
Rode abroad his realms to see; 
And wherever he did stir, 
What think you was his escort, sir? 
Why, an old cur, 
Sing, ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he! 
That’s the kind of king for me, 


If e’er he went into excess, 

*Twas from a somewhat lively thirst, 
But he who would his subjects bless, 

Odd’s fish |—must wet his whistle first, 
And so from every cask they got, 
Our king did to himself allot 

At least a pot. 

Sing, ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he! 
That’s the kind of king for me, 


To all the ladies of the land 
A courteous king, and kind, was he; 
The reason why you’ll understand, 
They named him Pater Patrice. 
Each year he called his fighting-men, 
And marched a league from home, and then, 
Marched back again. 
Sing, ho, ho, ho! and he, he, he! 
That’s the kind of king for me. 
The portrait of this best of kings 
Is extant still, upon a sign 
That on a village tavern swings, 
Famed in the country for good wine. 
The people in their Sunday trim, 
Filling their glasses to the brim, 
Look up to him. 
Singing, ha, ha, ha! and he, he, he! 
That’s the sort of king for me. 


In his autobiography, an interesting book, Béranger says 

' that hardly any other writer equally with himself could have 
dispensed with the help of the printer. His songs traveled 
of themselves from mouth to mouth without the intervention 


Béranger. 261 





of printed copies. In fact, Béranger was already famous 
before his works went into print. It was this oral currency 
of his songs that made them such engines of power. That 
brilliant Bohemian wit among Frenchmen, Chamfort, defined, 
it is said, before Béranger’s time, the government of France 
to be absolute monarchy tempered by songs. This cele- 
brated saying does not overstate the degree, though it may 
misstate the kind, of influence that Béranger exercised with 
his lyre. He was, by conviction and in sympathy, a deter- 
mined and ardent republican, and yet, in fact, he founded, or 
played the chief part in founding, the imperial usurpation of 
Louis Napoleon. This he did by getting the glories of the 
great emperor sung by Frenchmen throughout France, until 
the very name of Napoleon became an irresistible spell to 
conjure by. We now give the most celebrated of these 
Bonaparte songs. Mr. William Young, an American, has 
a volume of translations from Béranger. Of this particular 
song, Mr. Young’s version is so felicitous that we unhesitat- 
ingly choose it for our readers. The title of the song is, 
“The Recollections of the People.” It was, we believe, 
founded on an incident of Béranger’s own observation ; we 
shorten again by a stanza : 


Aye, many a day the straw-thatched cot 
Shall echo with his glory ! 

The humblest shed, these fifty years, 
Shall know no other story. 

There shall the idle villagers 
To some old dame resort, 

An@ beg her with those good old tales 
To make their evenings short. 

“What though they say he did us harm, 
Our love this cannot dim; 

Come, Granny, talk of him to us; 
Come, Granny, talk of him.” 


“Well, children—with a train of kings 
Once he passed by this spot ; 

‘Twas long ago; I had but just 
Begun to boil the pot. 


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On foot he climbed the hill, whereon 
I watched him on his way; 

He wore a small three-cornered hat; 
His overcoat was gray. 

I was half frightened till he spoke; 
‘ My dear,’ says he, ‘how do?’” 

“0, Granny, Granny, did he speak? 
What, Granny! speak to you?” 


“But when at length our poor Champagne 
By foes was overrun, 

He seemed alone to hold his ground ; 
Nor dangers would he shun. 

One night—as might be now—I heard 
A knock—the door unbarred— 

And saw—good God! ’twas he, himself, 
With but a scanty guard. 

‘O what a war is this!’ he cried, 
Taking this very chair.” 

“What! Granny, Granny, there he sat? 
What! Granny, he sat there?” 


**)'m hungry,’ said he: quick I served 
Thin wine and hard brown bread ; 

He dried his clothes, and by the fire 
In sleep drooped down his head. 

Waking, he saw my tears—‘ Cheer up, 
Good dame!’ says he, ‘I go 

’*Neath Paris’ walls to strike for France 
One last avenging blow.’ 

He went; but on the cup he used 
Such value did I set— 

It has been treasured.” ‘ What! till now? 
You have it, Granny, yet?” 


“ Here ’tis ; but ’twas the hero’s fate 
To ruin to be led; ; 

He, whom a pope had crowned, alas! 
In a lone isle lies dead. . 

"Twas long denied: ‘ No, no,’ said they, 
‘Soon shall he re-appear ; 

O’er ocean comes he, and the foe 
Shall find his master here.’ 


Béeranger. 263 





Ah, what a bitter pang I felt, 
When forced to own ’twas true!” 

“ Poor Granny! Heaven for this will look, 
Will kindly look on you.” 


There was not in Béranger’s genius much innate and irre- 
pressible buoyancy toward poetry, as we English-speakers 
conceive poetry. But he practiced a severely self-tasking art 
of verse, which at last yielded a product sufficiently consum- 
mate in form to command the admiration of qualified critics, 
He became unquestionably first among the song-writers of 
France; he even elevated song-writing, popular song-writing, 
to the rank of acknowledged literature. His fashion, and, 
with his fashion, his currency, are rapidly becoming things 
of the past; but the real merit of his achievement, and, more 
than that, the fact of his extraordinary influence make his 
name securely immortal in the literary history, and in the 
literature, of France. 


XXIT. 7 


LAMARTINE. 
1791-1869. 


LaMARTINE, the man, was an image incongruously molded 
of gold and of clay. Take him at his best, and what is 
there better? Take him at his worst, and you would not wish 
worse, 

The same contrast holds, but not in the same degree, in 
Lamartine the author. He is at once one of the most ad- 
mirable, and one of the least admirable, of writers. 

There are few figures in history worthier to command the 
homage of generous hearts than the figure of Lamartine in 
1848, calming and quelling the mob of Paris by the simple 
ascendant of genius and of bravery. There are few figures 
in history more abject than the figure of Lamartine, toward 


264 Classic French Course in English. 





the close of his life, in the garb of a beggar holding out his 
hat to mankind for the pence and half-pence of wonder, of - 
sympathy, and of sympathetic shame. 

Perhaps we instinctively fall into some contagious con- 
formity to Lamartine’s own exaggerating rhetoric in express- 
ing ourselves as we do. 

The chief facts of the life of Alphonse Marie Louis de 
Prat de Lamartine are briefly these. Well-born, having for 
mother a woman of more than Cornelian, of Christian, virtue, 
who herself mainly educated her son, he traveled, loved, lost, 
wept “melodious tears”—mixed much in Parisian society, 
until, at thirty, he published under the title “ Meditations,” 
a volume of verse which made him instantly, brilliantly, tri- 
umphantly, famous. Every thing desirable was easy to him 
now. He married an Englishwoman of wealth, he wrote and 
published more poetry, amusing himself meantime with vari- 
ous diplomatic service, was made member of the French 
Academy, and in 1832 went traveling in the East, like an 
Eastern prince for lavish splendor of equipage and outlay. 
His book, “ Memories of the Orient,” published three years 
after, was the fruit of what he saw and felt and dreamed 
during this luxurious experience of travel. Dreamed, we 
say, for Lamartine drew freely on his imagination to expand 
and embellish his memories of the East. Other volumes of 
verse, his “ Jocelyn,” his “Fall of an Angel,” and his “ Rec- 
ollections” followed speedily. 

The Revolution of 1830 had seated Louis Philippe on the 
throne. Lamartine under him had been elected to the leg- 
islature of France and had been making reputation as an 
orator. The poet and orator would now be historian. Lam- 
artine wrote his celebrated “History of the Girondists,” 
which, after first appearing in numbers, was issued in volume 
in 1847, This book had in it the fermenting principle of a 
fresh revolution. In 1848 that revolution came, and Louis 
Philippe fled from Paris and from France, in precipitate ab- 
dication of his throne, 

Now was the moment of glory and of opportunity for 


Lamartine. 265 





Lamartine. During the three months following, he may be 
said to have ruled France. Eloquence and bravery together 
never won triumphs more resplendent than were Lamartine’s 
during this swift interval of his dizzy elevation to power. He 
was in title simply minister for foreign affairs, in a provis- 
ional government which he had had himself the decision and 
the intrepidity among the first to propose. But his personal 
popularity, his serene courage, his magical eloquence, gave 
him much the authority of dictator. It cannot be asserted 
that Lamartine, in this crisis, proved himself a statesman 
able to cope with the stern exactions of the hour. The can- 
didate for such distinction success only can crown, and Lam- 
artine did not succeed. He fell, as suddenly and as swiftly 
as he had risen. Yesterday omnipotent, he was absolutely 
impotent to-day. 

But nothing can deprive Lamartine of the pacific glory his 
due from several extraordinary feats of eloquence achieved 
by him, at imminent risk to himself, on behalf of mankind. 
A mob of forty thousand Parisian fanatics roared into the 
street before the Hotel de Ville to compel the Provisional 
Government sitting there to adopt the red flag as the ensign 
of the republic. This meant nothing less than a new reign 
of terror for France. Lamartine, singlehanded, met the 
wild beast to its teeth, and with one stroke of the sword that 
went forth from his mouth laid it tamed at his feet. “The 
red flag you bring us,” cried the orator to the mob, he shin- 
ing the while resplendent in a personal beauty touched with 
the gleam of genius and glorified with the consecration 
of courage—like a descended Apollo, the rattling quiver 
borne on his shoulder—*The red flag you bring us,” 
said he, “has only gone round the Champ de Mars, 
trailed in the blood of the people—in 1791 and in 1793; 
while the tricolor has gone round the world, with the name, 
the glory, and the liberty of our country.” This eloquent 
condensation of history, untremblingly shot, at close quarters, 
full in the face of those wild-eyed insurgents, felled them, as 
if it had been a ball from a cannon. But ranks from behind 

12 


266 Classic French Course in English. 





still pressed forward with menacing cries. ‘Down with 
Lamartine!” ‘Down with the time-server!” “ Off with 
his head! His head! Hishead! lLamartine’s head! ” 

The brandished weapons were in Lamartine’s very face. 
But that gentle blood never blenched. “ My head, citizens? 
You want my head? Indeed, but I wish you had it, every 
one of you. If Lamartine’s head were now on each pair of 
shoulders among you, you would be wiser than you are, and 
the revolution would go on more prosperously.” The mob 
was in Lamartine’s hand again, taken captive with a jest. 

It is generally granted that Lamartine saved the nation 
from a new reign of terror. But eloquence is not statesman- 
ship; and Lamartine, weighed in the balance, was found 
wanting. He served at last only to hand over the state to 
Louis Napoleon, first president, and then emperor. 

Under Napoleon, Lamartine, now and henceforward simply 
a private citizen, found his affairs embarrassed. He had been 
a prodigal spender of money. He toiled at letters to mend 
his broken fortunes. But his sun was past its meridian, and 
it settled hopelessly in cloud toward its west. He wrote a 
pseudo-biography of himself and published it as.a serial in 
one of the Paris daily newspapers. He almost literally with 
his own hands performed the profaneness execrated by the 
poet, and “tare his heart before the crowd ”—or would have 
done so, if his production, the “ Confidences,” so called, had 
really been what it purported to be, the actual story of his 
life. It was in fact as much imagination as revelation. But 
the once overwhelmingly popular author now cheapened him- 
self before the public in almost every practicable way. He 
brought his own personal dignity to market in his works— 
and did this over and over again. The public bought their 
former idol at his own cheapened price, and he still remained 
poor. In 1850 a public subscription was opened for his 
relief. As a last humiliation, the proud patrician submitted 
to accept a pension from the empire of Louis Napoleon. 
This he enjoyed but two years, for in two years after he 
died. A further space of two years, and the empire itself - 


Lamartine. 267 





that granted Lamartine his pension had met its Sedan and 
ceased to be. 

Fresh from admiring the radiant pages of Lamartine’s 
rhetoric in prose, from admiring the iridescent play in color, 
the deliquescent melody in sound, of his yerse, we feel it pain- 
ful to admit to ourselves that so much indisputably fine effect 
goes for little or nothing, now that the fashion of that world 
of taste and feeling for which this writer wrote has passed 
returnlessly away. But so it is. Lamartine, like Chateau- 
briand, and for substantially the same reason, namely, lack of 
fundamental genuineness, has already reached that last pa- 
thetic phase, well-nigh worse than total eclipse, of literary 
fame, the condition of an author important in the history of 
literature, rather than in literature. 

Poet, orator, historian, statesman, this munificently gifted 
nature was most profoundly, most controllingly, poet. But 
he was French poet, which is to say that his poetry is re- 
moved, if not quite from access to the English mind, at least 
from access to the English mind through translation. He, 
however, enjoyed at first high English reputation as poet, and 
the publication of “ Jocelyn,” his masterpiece in verse, may be 
said to have been even a European event in literary history. 

The story of “Jocelyn” is avouched by the author to be 
almost a series of actual occurrences. This assertion, to those 
familiar with Lamartine’s style in asserting, will not be quite 
so conclusive as on its face it appears. At any rate, if 
“Jocelyn” be truth, Lamartine has made truth read like 
fiction, and fiction of a highly improbable sort. The story, 
true or fictitious—and which it is, as nobody now knows, so 
nobody now cares—we need not detain our readers to report. 

The poet staggered his public by printing on the title- 
page to his “ Jocelyn” the words, “ An Episode,” as much 
as to say that a certain “ Epic of Humanity,” which he might 
finally (but which, as a matter of fact, he never did) pro- 
duce, would be large enough to make shrink into the 
dimensions of a mere episode this poem of ten thousand lines 
more or less! 


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Now for an extract or two. In the “ Edinburgh Review,” 
of a date almost exactly fifty years past now, we find our 
translation. A day of festival, followed by a long evening of 
out-door dancing to music, has just closed. The breaking-up 
is described, with the sequel of young Jocelyn’s pensive 
and yearning emotions: 

Then later, when the fife and hautboy’s voice 
Began to languish like a failing voice, 

And moistened ringlets, by the dance unstrung, 
Close to the cheek in drooping tresses clung, 

And wearied groups along the darkening green 
Gliding, in converse soft and low, were seen, 
What sounds enchanting to the ear are muttered ! 
Adieus, regrets, the kiss, the word half uttered— 
My soul was stirred; my ear with sweet sounds rife 
Drank languidly the luscious draught of life; 

I followed with my step, my heart, my eye, 

Each maiden that with wearied eyes went by, 
Thrilled at the rustle of each silken dress, 

And felt that each that passed still left a joy the less. 
At last the dance is hushed, the din at rest, 

The moon is risen above the mountain’s crest; 
Only some lover, heedless of the hour, 

Wends homeward, creaming, to his distant bower; 
Or, where the village paths divide, there stand 
Some loitering couples, lingering hand in hand, 
Who start to hear the clock’s unwelcome knell, 
Then dive and vanish in the forest dell. 


And now Iam at home alone. ’Tis night. 

Ali still within the house, no fire, no light. 

Let me, too, sleep. Alas! no sleep is there! 
Pray then. My spirit will not hear my prayer. 
My ear is still with dancing measures ringing, 
Echoes whicli memory hack to sense is bringing; 
I c'ose my eyes: before my inward glance 

Still swims the /éte, still whirls the giddy dance; 
The graceful phantoms of the vanished ball 
Come flitting by in beauty each and all; 

A glance still haunts my couch; a soft hand seems - 
To press my hand, that trembles in my dreams, 
Fair tresses in the dance’s flight brought nigh, 
Just touch my cheek, and like the wind flow by, 


<= 


Lamartine. 269 





I'see from maiden brows the roses falling, 

I hear beloved lips my name recalling— 

Anne, Lucy, Blanche !—Where am I—What is this? 
What must love be, when even love’s dream is bliss! 


There is an indefinable French difference, but, that apart, 
the foregoing is somewhat like Goldsmith in his “ Deserted 
Village.” Or is it the tesemblance of meter that produces 
the impression ? ' 

“Jocelyn,” though certainly intended by the author to be 
pure, wavers at points on the edge of the exceptionably am- 
biguous. The following spring song, however, put by the 
poet into the mouth of his Laurence, is an inspiration as 
innocent as it is sweet : 


See, in her nest, the nightingale’s mute mate, 
Hatching her young, her patient vigil hold. 
See how with love her fostering wings dilate, 
As if to screen her nurslings from the cold. 


Her neck alone, in restlessness upraixed, 
O’ertops the nest in which her brood reposes, 
And her bright eye, with weary watching glazed, 
Closing to sleep, with every sound uncloses. 


Care for her callow young cousumes her rest, 
My very voice her downy bosom shakes, 
Ard her heart pants beneath its plumy vest, 
And the nest trembles with each breath she takes. 


What spell enchains her to this gentle care? 
Ter mate’s sweet melody the groves among, 
Who, from some branching oak, high poised in air 
Sends down the flowing river of his song. 


Hark! dost thou hear him, drop by drop distilling 
The sighs that sweetest after transport be, 
Then suddenly the vault above us filling 
With foaming cataracts of harmony? 


What spell enchains him in his turn—what makes 
His very being thus in languor me’t— 

But that his voice a living echo wakes, 
His lay within one loving heart is felt! 


270 Classie French Course in English. 





And, ravished by the note, his mate still holds 
Her watch attentive through the weary time; 

The season comes, the bursting shell unfolds, 
And life is music all, and love, and prime. 


Passing now from Lamartine’s poetry, expressly such, we 
go to his prose, which, however, is scarcely, if at all, less 
poetical. Poetry, or at least, the presence in power, and in 
great proportionate excess of power, of imagination, lording 
it over every thing else, over memory, judgment, taste, 
good sense, veracity—characterizes all that proceeded from 
Lamartine’s pen. His history is valueless, almost valueless, 
as history. His travels are utterly untrustworthy as records 
of fact. Lamartine cannot tell the simple truth. Persons, 
things, events, suffer a sea-change, always to something 
rich and strange seen by him looming in the luminous 
haze of atmosphere with which his imagination perpetually 
invests them. His men are ennobled, like Ulysses transfig- 
ured by Pallas-Athene. His women are beautiful as houris 
fresh from paradise. The aspects of ocean and shore and 
wood and stream and mountain and sky, are all, to Lamar- 
tine, washed with a light that never was on sea or land or in 
heaven overhead, the consecration and the poet’s dream. This 
quality in Lamartine’s style does not prevent his being very 
fine. He is very fine; but you feel, Oh, if this all were also 
true! : 

On the whole, large, splendid, scenic, admirable in instinct 
for choosing his point of view, as Lamartine is in his histo- 
ries, brilliant even, and fecund in suggestion, we turn from 
the ostensibly historical in our author to the ostensibly auto- 
biographical, in order to find our prose specimens of his qual- 
ity in the “ Confidences.” Lamartine never perhaps did any 
thing finer, any thing more characteristic, than in telling his 
story of ‘Graziella” in that work. This story is an “epi- 
sode” where it appears; or rather—for it is hardly so much 
as let into the continuous warp and woof of the “Confi- 
dences ”—it is‘a separable device of ornament embroidered 
upon the surface of the fabric. It is probably, indeed, to 


Lamartine. -271 





some extent autobiographic ; but the imagination had as much 
part in it as the memory. For instance, the actual girl that 
is transfigured into the “ Graziella” of the story was not a 
coral-grinder, as she is represented by Lamartine, but an op- 
erative in a tobacco factory. The real beauty of the tale is, 
by a kind of just retribution on the author, inseparably bound 
up with unconscious revelation on his part of heartless vanity 
and egotism in his own character. You admire, but while 
you admire you wonder, you reprobate, you contemn. A 
man such as this, you instinctively feel, was not worthy to 
live immortally as an author. You are reconciled to let 
Lamartine pass. 

“Graziella” is a story of love and death, on one side, of 
desertion and expiation—expiation through sentimental tears 
—on the other. One would gladly trust, if one could, that 
the reality veiled under the fiction was as free in fact from 
outward guilt as it is idealized to have been by the writer’s 
fancy. But neither this supposition, nor any other charitable 
supposition whatever, can redeem “ Graziella” from the con- 
demnation of being steeped in egregious vanity, egotism, and 
false sentiment, from the heart of the author. 

We strike into the midst of the narrative, toward the end. 
There has been described the growth of relation between the 
author aud the heroine of the idyll, a fisherman’s daughter. 
And now this heroine, Graziella, is desired in marriage by.a 
worthy young countryman of hers. Such a suitor—for she 
loves, though secretly, the author (this by the way is a thing 
almost of course with Lamartine)—the girl cannot bring her- 
self to accept. In despair she flees to make herself a nun. 
She is found by the autobigrapher alone in a deserted house. 
He ministers to her in her exhausted state—and this to the 
following result : 


“T feel well,” said she to me, speaking in a tone of voice that was low, 
soft, even, and monotonous, as if her breast had completely lost its vibra- 
tion and its accent at the same time, and as if her voice had only retained 
one single note. “I have in vain sought to hide it from myself—I have 
in vain sought to hide it forever from thee. I may die, but thou art the 


272. Classie French Course in English. 





only one that I can ever love. They wished to betroth me to an- 
other; thou art the one to whom my soul is betrothed. I will never give 
myself to another on earth, for I have already secretly given myself to 
thee. To thee on earth, or to God in heaven! that is the vow I made the 
first day I discovered that my heart was sick for thee! I well know that 
I am only a poor girl, unworthy to tonch thy feet even in thought; there- 
fore, have I neverasked thee to love me. Inever willask thee if thou dost 
loveme. But I—I love thee, Llove thee, I love thee!” And she seemed 
to concentrate her whole soul in those three words. ‘ Now despise me, 
mock me, spurn me with thy feet! Laugh at me if thou wilt, as a mad 
thing who fancies she is a queen in the midst of her tatters. Hold me up 
to the scorn of the whole world! Yes, I will tell them with my own lips 
—‘ Yes, I love him. And had you been in my place you would have 
done as I have—you would have loved him or have died.’ ” 


The man thus wooed by the maid assures her of his recip- 
rocal affection. But the author explains to his readers : 


Alas! it was not real love, it was but its shadow in my heart. But I 
was too young and too ingenuous not to be deceived by it myself. I 
thought that I adored her as so much innocence, beauty, and love de- 
served to be adored by a lover. I told her so, with that accent of sincer- 
ity which emotion imparts; with that impassioned restraint which is im- 
parted by solitude, darkness, despair, and tears. She believed it because 
she required that belief to live, and because she had enough passion in 
her own heart to make up for its insufficiency in a thousand other hearts. 


The autobiographer is summoned away by his mother, and 
he goes, lacerating Graziella’s heart, but swearing a thousand 
oaths of fealty to his beloved. Alas! the “ treacherous air of 
absence” undid all—with him, though not with her. He 
blames himself in retrospect—gently—and pities himself la- 
mentably, as follows : 


I was at that ungrateful period of life when frivolity and imitation make 
a young-man feel a false shame in the best feelings of his nature....I 
would not have dared to confess. ... the name and station of the object 
of my regret and sadness. . .. How I blush now for having blushed then! 
and how much more precious was one of the joy-beams or one of the tear- 
drops of her chaste eyes than all the glances, all the allurements, all the 
smiles for which I was about to sacrifice her image! Ah! man, when he 
is too young, cannot love! He knows not the value of any thing! He 
only knows what real happiness is after he has lost it. ... True love is 
the ripe fruit of life. At twenty, it is not known, it is imagined. 


Lamartine. 273 





A farewell letter from Graziella dying : 


“The doctor says that I shall die in less than three days. I wish to 
say farewell to thee ere I lose all my strength. Oh! if I had thee near 
me, I would live! But it is God’s will. I will soon speak to thee, and 
forever, from on high. Love my soul! It shall be with thee as long as 
thou livest. I leave thee my tresses, which were cut off for thy sake one 
night. Consecrate them to God in some chapel in thy own land, that 
something belonging to me may be near thee! ” 


The autobiographer “complied with the order contained 
in her dying behest.” He says: “ From that day forward, a 
shadow of her death spread itself over my features and over 
my youth.” He apostrophizes the remembered Graziella as 
follows : 


“Poor Graziella! Many days have flown by since those days. I have 
loved, Ihave been loved. Other rays of beauty and affection have illumined 
my gloomy path. Other souls have opened themselves for me, to reveal 
to me in the hearts of women the most mysterious treasures of beauty, 
sanctity, and purity that God ever animated on earth, to make us under- 

‘ stand, foretaste, and desire heaven; but nothing has dimmed thy first ap- 
parition in my heart. ... Thy real sepulcher isin my soul. There every 
part of thee is gathered and entombed. Thy name never strikes my ear 
in vain. I love the language in which it is uttered. At the bottom of 
my heart there is always a warm tear which filters, drop by drop, and 
secretly falls upon my memory, to refresh it and embalm it within me.” 


The pensive poet even makes poetry on the subject, twenty 
years afterward, poetry which, in his customary triplets of 
expression, he calls “the balm of a wound, the dew of a heart, 
the perfume of a sepulchral flower.” He wrote it, he says, 
“with streaming eyes.”. He prints his stdnzas—for Lamar- 
tine is eminently of those who, as it has been said, weep in 
print and wipe their eyes with the public—and with a sigh, 

“says: 

Thus did I expiate by these written tears the cruelty and ingratitude 
of my heart of nineteen. I have never been able to reperuse these verses 
without adoring that youthful image which the transparent and plaintive 
waves of the Gulf of Naples will roll eternally before my eyes... and 
without detesting myself! But souls forgive on high. Hers has forgiven 
me. ag me also, you!—I have wept. 


12* 


4 Classic French Course in English, 





We ought not to disturb, with any further words of our 
own, the impression of himself which Lamartine has now 
made on thereader. He has given us here his own true image. 
He is the weeping poet. It is fit—let him dissolve, let him 
exhale, from view in tears. 

Lachrymose Lamartine, farewell ! 


XXIII. 
THE GROUP OF 1830. 


VICTOR HUGO: 1802-1885; SAINTE-BEUVE: 1804-1869; 
BALZAC: 1'799-1850; GEORGE SAND: 1804-1876; DE MUSSET: 
1810-1857. 


As a convenient method of inclusion and condensation for 
a number of authors who must by no means be omitted, but 
for whom there is left little room in these pages, we adopt the 
plan of making a cluster of important names to be treated in 
a single chapter. The political and the literary history of 
France join a sort of synchronism with one another at a cer- 
tain point of time, which makes this arrangement not only 
feasible but natural. 

The accession of Louis Philippe to the throne of France 
and the first representation of Victor Hugo’s “ Hernani” in 
Paris both occurred in the year 1830. The Bourbon or 
absolutist tradition in French politics and the classic tradition 
in French letters were thus at one and the same moment 
decisively interrupted. For, as in the commencing reign of 
Louis Philippe, the “Citizen King” of France, the French 
people became for the first time, under monarchical rule, a 
recognized estate in the realm, so, with the triumph of Victor 
Tlugo’s “ Hernani” on the stage, the hour may be said to have 
struck of culmination in splendor and in influence for the 
romantic movement in French literature. The dominance of 
the ideas indicated in the expression “‘the Romantic Move- 
ment” was then suddenly for the moment so overwhelming 


Victor Hugo. 275 





and so wide that it amounted almost to a usurpation of letters 
in France. We might indeed have written “The French 
Romanticists ” as a fairly good alternative title to the present 
chapter. 


1. Vicror Hueco. 


The men of 1830—we thus use a designation which has 
come to be established in French literary history —began each 
man his career in letters as a fighting romanticist. Victor 
Hugo was the acknowledged Achilles of the fight. Whoever 
wavered backward, Victor Hugo clamped his feet for his life- 
time on the bridge of war, where his plume nodded defiance, 
seeming still to say for its wearer standing with a cliff of 
adamant at his back, 


Come one, come all, this rock shall fly 
From its firm base as soon as I. 


Around Victor Hugo, as the towering central figure among 
them all, were mustered, though some of them not to remain 
in this comradeship with him, Sainte-Beuve, Balzac, George 
Sand, De Musset. There were others than these, but these 
shall for us here constitute the group of 1830. 

Weshall be in yet better accord with Victor Hugo’s estimate 
of himself, if we take for his symbol a being mightier even 
than a demigod like Achilles. Let us do so and call him a 
Titan. But the past tense half seems an anachronism in speak- 
ing of Victor Hugo. The earth still trembles to his retiring 
footsteps and to the portentous reaction of his wrestle in war 
with the gods. This is his glory—he fought against Olympus, 
and, if he did not overthrow, at least he was not overthrown. 
Olympus in our parable was classicism in power ; Victor Hugo 
was the genius of insurgent romanticism. 

We thus repeat yet again terms which it would be difficult 
precisely to define. Classicism and romanticism are two forces 
in literature, seemingly opposed to each other, which, how- 
ever, need to be compounded and reconciled in a single 
resultant, in order to the true highest effect from either. For. 


276 Classic French Course in English. 





neither classicism norromanticism alone.concludes the ultimate 
theory of literature. 

Classicism criticises; romanticism creates. Classicism 
enjoins self-control ; romanticism encourages self-indulgence. 
Classicism is mold ; romanticism is matter. Classicism is art ; 
romanticism is nature. Classicism is law ; romanticism is 
life. Romanticism is undoubtedly first and indispensable ; 
but so, not less, classicism is indispensable, though second. 
Neither, in short, can get along without the other. But Victor 
Hugo represents romanticism. 

Victor Hugo’s personality seems to have been a literary 
force almost as much as was his genius. As his quantity was 
immense, so his quality was vivific. Such a man was certain 
to be not only the master of a school but the center of a 
worship. Mr. Swinburne’s late volume on Victor Hugo may 
be cited in extreme example of the deific ascription rendered 
by many at the shrine of this idolatry. Mr. Matthew Arnold, 
on the other hand, lost no opportunity to flout with indignity 
the claims of Victor Hugo to his supreme literary godship. 

This great French writer has so recently died that, for the 
purposes of this book, he might almost be considered still 
living. At any rate, he has of late been so much talked bout 
in current periodicals ; he is, in some of his books, so freshly 
familiar to all, and, if we must say it, he offers a subject so 
perplexing to treat at this moment judicially, that we shall 
in some measure avoid responsibility by presenting him here 
with the utmost brevity—brevity, however, to be taken rather 
as a homage, than as a slight, to the unmanageable greatness 
by imminency of his merit and his fame. 

Victor-Marie Hugo wrote verse very early, beginning as a 
classicist. In later youth he was royalist and religious in 
spirit. At twenty he acquired the title of “ the sublime boy.” 
How he acquired this title seems a matter of doubt. It is 
generally supposed to have been given by Chateaubriand, in - 
his quality of patriarch of French letters. But this origin of 
the sobriquet the present writer has seen seriously suggested 
to be, along with the sobriquet itself, the pure invention of 


Victor Hugo. . 277 





Victor Hugo’s own imaginative egotism ; which fruitful source 
of autobiography is said also to have yielded the poet’s noble 
pedigree—the process of production employed on his part 
being, in the latter case, the extremely simple one of adopting 
for ancestry the ancient line of a family, bearing the same 
name indeed with himself, but otherwise utterly unrelated to 
his own humble house. ‘The really extraordinary independ- 
ence of fact with which Victor Hugo undoubtedly made his 
assertions respecting himself renders any testimony that he 
bears on this point interesting as imagination rather than 
instructive as history. For three or four years now he was 
an irrepressible producer and publisher of verse. At twenty- 
five he put out his “Cromwell,” a drama, with a belligerent 
preface in favor of romanticism. After this each play of his_ 
was a battle for that literary cause. His “ Hernani” (1830) 
was at last more than a battle—it was a victory. 

The royalist in due time became republican, When Louis 
Napoleon was president, Victor Hugo opposed him. When 
Louis Napoleon made himself ‘emperor, Victor Hugo de- 
nounced him. JBanished for this from France, the poet be- 
took himself to Belgium. Repelled from Belgium, he found 
refuge in England. Here, or, more exactly, in the island of 
Jersey first, and longer, afterward, in the island of Guernsey, 
he remained till the second empire fell. He then returned to 
Paris, and shared the melancholy fortunes of that beleaguered 
capital during the Prussian siege and during the anarchy of 
the Commune. Here, finally, he died, and, by his own will 
and testament, in a quite other than the original meaning of 
that pregnant Scripture phrase, “was buried ”—for his 
funeral was to be attended with peculiar obsequies. He 
signified his wish to be treated in burial exactly as one of 
those paupers of whose cause he had been in his works the 
life-long champion. 

During his long exile, which, notwithstanding his passionate 
love of Paris, he refused to shorten by any understanding 
arrived at with the emperor, he kept persecuting that usurper 
with printed diatribes, both in prose and in verse, which for 


278 Classic French Course in English. 





mordant bitterness have probably never been surpassed in 
the literature of invective. One of these diatribes was a 
book entitled “ The History of a Crime.” To this he prefixed 
a kind of imprimatur of his own, which may be quoted here 
as well exemplifying the high oracular style of expression 
characterized by short sentences and short paragraphs—these 
often of a single sentence only—that he habitually affected : 


This work is more than opportune. It is imperative. I publish it. 
VE 


Victor Hugo’s egotism was so vast that it was insane if it 
was not sublime. To exemplify adequately this statement 
by extracts would ask pages of room. The four lines about 
to follow, from one of his longer poems, present a modest 
and moderate example. The poet has been supposing the 
impossible case that the Supreme Being should take different 
views, in a certain matter, from his, the poet’s, own—that 
he should outrage his, the poet’s, sense of moral propriety. 
Here is how, in that case, Victor Hugo would, he declares, 
deal with offending Deity (we translate literally the original 
Alexandrines, line for line, without attempting to reproduce 
either meter or rhyme): 


I would go, I would see him, and I would seize him, 
Amid the heavens, as one takes a wolf amid the woods, 
And, terrible, indignant, calm, extraordinary, 

I would denounce him with his own thunder. 


To Victor Hugo himself, the foregoing was not blasphemy; 
it was simply sublimity of a sort suitable to the character of 
the poet. There was, it is said, fully developed mental 
unsoundness in his father’s family and in his own. Victor 
Hugo’s own genius had, we suspect, some trace of a real, 
though noble, insanity in it. 

In 1862, appeared “Les Miserables,” which must be 
accounted, if not the greatest, at least the most popular work 
of its author. This book was issued simultaneously in eight 
different cities and in nine different languages—a circumstance 
probably not paralleled in the history of literature. The fame 


Victor Hugo. 279 





of “Les Miserables ” does not fade, and it hardly will fade. 
It is a book of truly prodigious elemental power. That, 
however, Victor Hugo’s genius in producing it worked with 
some disturbing consciousness of a theory of literary art to 
be exemplitied and defended, the following curious note, in- 
serted in the midst of the text, at a point of interest in the 
story, may serve to show: 


Then the poor old man began sobbing and soliloquizing; for it is a mis- 
take to suppose that there is no soliloquy in nature. Powerful agitations often 
talk aloud. 


“Les Miserables ” is justly open to many strictures, both 
on literary grounds and on ethical; but it must be pro- 
nounced, notwithstanding, a great, and, on the whole, a 
noble work. 

Victor Hugo made this approach to the illimitable in power, 
that he was well-nigh equally able to do great things and to 
do small. To exhibit by specimen his achievement in verse - 
we shall offer here a few of his small things, in the im- 
possibility of representing his great. The small things that 
we offer may acquire a value extrinsic to themselves if 
thought of as the gentle play of a giant who could with the 

same ease have astonished you by exhibitions of strength. 

- Victor Hugo went a second time, having once failed, to 
intercede with King Louis Philippe on behalf of a political 
offender condemned to death. It was late at night, and the 
monarch could not be seen. The intercessor would not be 
baffled, and, bethinking himself to appeal by the tenderness 
of birth and of death to the king, wrote four lines of verse 
which he left on the table. The allusions in them are to a 
lovely daughter of the royal house just lost and to a little son 
just born. We give the French text, and follow it with a 
close English translation : 


Par votre ange envolée ainsi qu’une colombe, 
Par ce royal enfant doux et fréle roseau, 

Grace encore une fois! grace au nom de la tombe! 
Grace au nom du berceau! 


280 Classic French Course in English. 





By your lost angel, dove-like from you flown, 

By this sweet royal babe, fair, fragile reed, . 
Mercy once more! Be mercy, mercy shown, 

In the tomb’s name, aud cradle’s, both, I plead. 


The poet’s plea availed. 

Another little gem of Victor Hugo’s is the following 
quatrain, which, though it may have had at first some 
particular occasion, is capable of the most general applica- 
tion. Again we give the French, for the French here almost. 
translates itself: | 


Soyons comme l’oiseau posé pour un instant 
Sur des rameaux trop fréles; 

Qui sent trembler la branche, mais qui chant pourtant, 
Sachant qu'il a des ailes. 


This may be thus rendered, almost word for word : 


Like the bird let us be, for one moment alight 
Upon branches too frail to uphold, 

Who feels tremble the bough, but who sings in despite, 
Knowing well she has wings to unfold. 


One more little gem from Victor Hugo’s treasury of such 
we are happily able to present in a version whose authorship 
will commend it; Mr. Andrew Lang translates “The Grave 
and the Rose.” The poet here affirms, as he is very fond of 
doing, that capital article in his creed, the immortality of the 
soul: 

; The Grave said to the Rose, 

“What of the dews of morn, 
Love’s flower, what end is theirs ?” 

* And what of souls outworn, 

Of them whereon doth close 

The tomb's mouth unawares?” 

The Rose said to the Grave. 


The Rose said, “In the shade 
From the dawn’s tears is made 

A perfume faint and strange, 
Amber and honey sweet.” 
“ And all'the spirits fleet 

Do suffer a sky-change 


‘Vietor Hugo, 281 





More strangely than the dew— 
To God’s own angels new,” 
The Grave said to the Rose. 


The majesty with which this great Frenchman would 
sometimes, in prose, condescend to be an acrobat walking 
the tight-rope of grandiloquence stretched over a bottomless 
abyss of the ridiculous, is well shown in his monograph on 
Shakespeare. This is accessible in a scholarlike English 
translation (A, C. McClurg & Co., Chicago, publishers) by 
Melville B, Anderson. The following sentences will indicate 
what it is. No one familiar with Victor Hugo can doubt that 
the great presence of urmsELF, the writer, was really the 
chief thing in his musing eye, when, in the latter part of this 
extract, he was ostensibly describing and vindicating roman- 
ticist Shakespeare: 


Shakespeare, shuddering, has within himself winds, spirits, magic 
potions, vibrations; he sways in the passing breeze, obscure effluences 
pervade him, he is filled with the unknown sap of life. Thence 
his agitation, at the core of which is peace. It is this agitation which is 
lacking in Goethe, wrongly praised for his impassiveness, which is in- 
feriority. All minds of the first order have this agitation. Itis in Job, 
in Aischylus, in Alighieri. This agitation is humanity. ... It 
seems at times as if Shakespeare terrified Shakespeare. He shudders 
at his own depth. This is the sign of supreme intelligence. It is his own 
vastuess which shakes him and imparts to him strange and mighty oscil- 
lations. There is no genius without billows. An intoxicated savage, it 
may be. He has the savagery of the virgin forest; he has the intoxication 
of the high sea. : - 


“He shudders at his own depth”—hardly could we resist 
the temptation to bracket in “ [Victor Hugo] ” after the pro- 
noun “he.” Every reader should do this mentally for himself; 
he otherwise will miss that important part of the true sense, 
which here is written between the lines. There never was 
genius with more inseparable, unescapable, tyrannizing con- 
sciousness of itself. You feel the personality even more than 
you feel the genius in reading Victor Hugo. 

A considerable part of Victor Hugo’s prose production, 
mostly fiction, has been translated into English. Messrs. T. 


2382 Classic French Course in English. 





Y. Crowell & Co. publish six portly volumes in a uniform 
edition. From “Les Miserables” in this series we make 
extracts which will briefly represent Victor Hugo’s prose at_ 
its very best, alike in style, in thought, and in spirit. In 
the first, the writer gives utterance to reflections inspired 
by the final event of the battle of Waterloo: 


This vertigo, this terror, this downfall into ruin of the loftiest bravery 
which ever astounded history—is that causeless? No. The shadow of 
an enormous right is projected athwart Waterloo. It is the day of 
destiny. The force which is mightier than man produced that day. Hence 
the terrified wrinkle of those brows; hence all those great souls sur- 
rendering their swords. Those who have conquered Europe have fallen 
prone on the earth, with nothing left to say or to do, feeling the present 
shadow of a terrible presence. Hoc erat in fatis. That day the perspect- 
ive of the human race underwent a change. Waterloo is the hinge of the 
nineteenth century. The disappearance of the great man was necessary 
to the advent of the great century. Some one, a person to whom one re- 
plies not, took the responsibility on himself. The panic of heroes can be 
explained. In the battle of Waterloo there is something more than a 
cloud, there is something of the meteor. God has passed by. 


In the second, Victor Hugo contrasts the two leaders, the 
conqueror and the conquered, of that momentous day: 


Waterloo is the strangest encounter in history. Napoleon and Well- 
ington. They are not enemies; they are opposites. Never did God, who 
is fond of antitheses, make a more striking contrast, a more extraordinary 
comparison. . On one side, precision, foresight, geometry, prudence, an 
assured retreat, reserves spared, with an obstinate coolness, an imper- 
turbable method, strategy, which takes advantage of the ground, tactics, 
which preserve the equilibrium of batallions, carnage, executed accord- 
ing to rule, war regulated, watch in hand, nothing voluntarily left to 
‘chance, the ancient classic courage, absolute regularity; on the other 
intuition, divination, military oddity, superhuman instiuet, a flaming 

glance, an indescribable something which gazes like an eagle, and which 
strikes like the lightning, a prodigious art in disdainful impetuosity, all the 
mysteries of a profound soul, association with destiny; the stream, the 
plain, the forest, the hill, summoned, and ina manner, forced to obey, the 
despot going even so far as to tyrannize over the field of battle; faith in 
a star mingled with strategic science, elevating but perturbing it. Well- 
ington was the Baréme of war; Napoleon was its Michael Angelo; and 
on this occasion genius was vanquished by calculation. On both sides 
some one was awaited. It was the exact calculator who succeeded. 


Victor Hugo. 283 





Napoleon was waiting for Grouchy; he did not come. Wellington ex- 
pected Bliicher; he came. 


It remains only to exemplify, as best in small space we 
ean, Victor Hugo’s portentous, his terrific, power in working 
up a tragic situation, and displaying it as in a calcium-light 
of intense imaginative description or narration. We shall then 
feel that this Titanic figure in French literature is at least by 
suggestive partial glimpses fairly before our readers. From 
* Les Miserables,” we take the following passage, introduced 
by the original author as a first step only in the climax by 
which he represents the supreme agony of his hero in a great 
crisis of his life: 


It sometimes happens that on certain shores of Bretagne or Scotland 
a man, traveler or fisherman, while walking at low tide on the beach, far 
from shore, suddenly notices that for several minutes past he has been 
walking with some difficulty. The beach under foot is like pitch; his 
soles stick fast to it; it is no longer sand, it is bird-lime.... 

The man pursues his way, he walks on, turns toward the land, en- 
deayors to approach the shore. Heis not uneasy. Uneasy about what? 
Only he is conscious that the heaviness of his feet seems to be increasing 
at’ every step that he takes. Allatoncehesinksin. He sinks in two or 
three inches. Decidedly, he is not on the rigkt road: he halts to get his 
bearings. Suddenly he glances at his feet; his feet have disappeared 
The sand has covered them. He draws his feet out of the sand, he tries 
to retrace his steps, he turns back, he sinks in more deeply than before. 
The sand is up to lis ankles, he tears himself free from it and flings him- 
self to the left, the sand reaches to mid-leg, be flings himself to the right, 
the sand comes up to his knees. Then, with indescribable terror, he 
recognizes the fact that he is caught ina quicksand. ... 

He shouts, he waves his hat, or his handkerchief, the sand continually 
gains on him. . . . He is condemned to that terrible interment, long, 
infallible, implacable, which it is impossible to either retard or hasten, 
which lasts for hours, which will not come to an end, which seizes 
you erect, free, in the flush of health, which drags you down by the 
feet, which, at every effort that you attempt, at every shout that you 

“utter, draws you a little lower, which has the air of punishing you for 
your resistance by a redoubled grasp, which forces a man to return 
slowly to earth, while leaving him time to survey the horizun, the trees, 
the verdant country, tle smoke of the villages on the plain, the sails of 
the ships on the sea, the birds which fly and sing, the sun and the 
sky. . . . The wretched man. . . shrieks, implores, cries to the 


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clouds, wrings his hands, grows desperate. Behold him in sand 
up to his belly, the sand reaches to his breast, he is only a bust now. 
Ue uplifts his hands, utters furious groans, clenches his nails on the 
beach, tries to cling fast to that-ashes, supports himself on his elbows in 
order to raise himself from that soft sheath, and sobs frantically; the 
sand mounts higher. The sand has reached his shouiders, the sand 
reaches to his throat; only his face is visible now. His mouth cries 
aloud, the sand fills it; silence. His eyes still gaze forth, the sand closes 
them; night. Then his brow decreases, a little hair quivers above tlie 
sand; a hand projects, pierces the surface of the beach, waves, and dis- 
appears. Sinister obliteration of a man! 


Victor Hugo’s hero was involved thus in a quicksand—but 
the quicksand in his case was underground, and dark as 
Erebus; it was a quicksand composed of the unspeakable 
foulness and fetor of a cess-pool—he was wading up to his 
very chin in the noisome Styx of the great Paris sewer. All 
this to rescue, upborne in his arms above his head, a man 
unconscious, perhaps already dead from wounds received, and 
a man whom he, the rescuer, hated. There is Victor Hugo for 
-you, Victor Hugo in his glory. For the glory of Victor 
Hugo as novelist is in climaxes of agony, lashed together and 
reared like an endless ladder reaching to heaven. This his 
strength is his-weakness. All is said that need be said in 
hostile criticism of Victor Hugo’s writings, when it is said 
‘that he is always to the last degree egotistic and to the last 
degree theatric. Effect is every thing, truth nothing, with 
him. ; : 
That Victor Hugo willed to be buried exactly like a pauper 
did net prevent the occurrence of certain very important 
contrasts between his obsequies and the rites of an ordinary 
pauper funeral; perhaps, indeed, such a will on his part con- 
tributed to create the difference which at all events existed. 
The funeral attendance was said to be the most numerous 
ever seen in France. A million spectators were present. 
Three large wagons headed the procession filled with floral 
gifts. A beautiful diadem of Irish lilies was contributed by 
Tennyson, inscribed “To the World’s Greatest Poet.” 

The French apotheosis of a national idol would not be 


Victor Hugo. 285 





complete without tribute from the theater. Accordingly, 
the Theatre Frangais produced a drama by M. Rénan en- 
titled “ Mort,” in which the shades of Corneille, Racine, 
Boileau, Voltaire, and Diderot hold a dialogue about human 
progress in the century to follow them, and, Corneille asking, 
“ What poet will sing in that era, as sweet and tendcr as 
Racine, as logical as Boileau, as clear in style as Voltaire,” 
the genius of the age lyrically answers, “ Hugo,” at the same 
time placing a crown on Hugo’s bust. 

Victor Hugo the man, especially as he mellowed with old 
age, was a sunny, sweet, benignant nature. Tle was a 
hearty, one might almost say a partisan, believer in God— 
atheism was so offensive to him. Unfortunately, however, 
Victor Hago’s theism was not such as to enforce departure, 
in his own personal practice, from that deplorable tradition 
of his country which has rendered so many distinguished 
French authors, from the earliest to the latest, offenders 
against the laws of marriage and of chastity. 


ie 2. SaintE-BEvVE. 


Sainte-Beuve is an instance of the half-malicious sport- 
iveness of nature or of fortune. What he chiefly de- 
sired was the fame of a poet. What he chiefly got was 
the fame of a critic. But Sainte-Beuve’s fame as a critic 
was far more in fact, if far less to his mind, than any fame 
that he could have achieved as a poet. In poetry, he never 
could have risen higher than to be a poet of the second 
or of the third rank. He is admitted to be a critic of the 
first rank. Nay, in the opinion of many, Sainte-Beuve con- 
stitutes a rank by himself, having no peers. 

Sainte-Beuve’s range of subjects was very wide. He exer- 
cised himself to be equally open and fair toward all schools 
of taste and of opinion alike. At the outset, he was of the 
coterie of the romanticists. But he soon broke with these, 
either personally repelled by antipathies, or else unconscious- 
ly attracted by a secret sympathy of his own, too strong for 
his contrary will to resist, toward the classical standards 


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respesented in the seventeenth-century writers. He never 
seems to feel himself more entirely in his element than when 
he is appreciating the literature of the French golden age. 

As to religion, Sainte-Beuve, having had his phase of 
pietism even, ended by becoming a blank unbeliever. But 
his own antipathetic personal attitude of intellect and of 
heart toward Christianity he would not in the least allow to 
disturb the urbanity and serenity of his tolerance for the 
most orthodox Christian writers, Such, at any rate, was his 
standard and ideal. 

But at this point, as at all points, the complaisance of 
Sainte-Beuve’s writing is a manner with him, rather than a 
spirit. It does not penetrate deeply. He loves his “ insin- 
uations.” That is his own word. He is willing to write a 
whole essay in criticism for the sake of the “insinuations ” 
which his deceitful blandness will sheathe. Or, rather, he 
would sooner give up the whole essay than forego a phrase, 
or perhaps a single word, containing his insinuation. It was 
partly his critical conscience, no doubt, instinctively nice 
about shades of opinion and of expression; but then a some- 
thing very like malice was mingled with his critical con- 
science. With all that must be conceded to the value of 
Sainte-Beuve’s critical work, readers are conscious, in con- 
cluding the perusal of almost any one of his essays, that the 
result to them is a sapor remaining on their literary palate, 
rather than substance of nutriment entered into their mental 
digestion. Their food has been refined into a flavor. 

For our illustration of Sainte-Beuve, we go to a paper of 
his on Bossuet. But we need to prepare our readers. Sainte- 

Beuve is a writer for the few, instead of for the many. To 
- profit from him requires some effort of attention. One must 
study a little, as well as simply read. Sainte-Beuve does not 
deal in heavy strokes. His lines are most of them fine, 
many of them hair-lines vanishing almost into invisibility. 
He escapes you like Proteus. Very different is he, by this 
elusive quality of his, from his countryman, M. Taine, 
whose bold crayon sketches are at once appreciable to all. 


Sainte-Beuve. 287 





In the choice indicated of specimen, we draw from a se- 
ries of short criticisms which the author called Causeries de 
Lundi; “ Monday-Chats,” Mr. William Matthews, who has a 
volume of select translations from them, not unhappily ren- 
ders the title. These were originally published as Monday 
articles in the columns of two Paris journals, the Constitu- 
tioneland the Moniteur. Mr, Matthews’s volume is introduced 
by a most readable biographical sketch and literary appre- 
ciation of Sainte-Beuve himself from the pen of the trans- 
lator. M. Sainte-Beuve, we ought to say, in addition to his 
very considerable body of criticism, ranging, as we have in- 
timated, over a wide field of literature, wrote an extended 
historical monograph on Port Royal, which is constantly re- 
ferred to by writers as an authority on its subject. 

The critic characterizes his subject broadly by his most 
commanding traits: 

The simple idea of order, of authority, of unity, of the continual gov-. 
ernment of Providence, Bossuet, among the moderns, has grasped more 
completely than any other man, and he applies it on all occasions without 
effort, and, as it were, by an irrefutable deduction. Bossuet is tle He- 
brew genius, expanded, fecundated by Christianity, and open to all the 
gains of the human intelligence, but acknowledging something of sovereign 
interdiction, and closing its vast horizon precisely atthe point where its 
light ceases, In mien and in tone he resembles a Moses; there are 
mingled in his speech traits characteristic of the Prophet-King, touches 
of a pathos ardent and sublime; there sounds the voice eloquent by emi- 
nence, the simplest, tle strongest, the most abrupt, the most familiar, the 
most suddenly outbursting in thunder. Even where he holds his course 
unbending, in an imperious flood, he bears along with him treasures 
of eternal human morality. Aud it is by all these qualities that he is for 
us a unique man, and that, whatever may be the employment he makes 
of his speech, he remains the model of eloqueuce the most exalted, and 
of language the most beautiful. 

Sainte-Beuve is so much a critic that he cannot help crit- 
icising by the way, or even sometimes perhaps a little out of 
the way. But it will be quite to our purpose if we admit 
here what Sainte-Beuve incidentally says of Lamartine: 

[Bossuet] was early distinguished for surprising gifts of memory and 
of understanding. He knew Virgil by heart, as, a little later, he knew 


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Homer. ‘Less easy to understand is it,” says M. de Lamartine, '‘ how he 
was infutuated all his life with the Latin poet, Horace, spirit exquisite, 
but the reverse of spontaneous and natural, who strings his lyre with 
only the softest fibers of the heart; a careless voluptuary,” ete. M. de 
Lamartine, who has so well discerned the great features of the eloquence 
and of the talent of Bossuet, has studied a little too lightly lis life, and he 
has here. proposed to himself a difficulty which does not exist; ‘there is no- 
where mention made in fact of that énexplicable predilection of Bossuet for 
Horace, the least divine of all-the poets. M. de Lamartine must have inad- 
vertently read “Horace ” instead of ‘‘Homer.” . . . It was Fénelon (and not 
Bossuet) who read and relished Horace more than any other poet, who 
knew him by heart. . . . The great pagan preference of Bossuet (if one 
may use such an expression) was quite naturally for Homer; after him 
for Virgil; Horace, in his judgment and in his liking, came far behind 
them. But the book by eminence which gave early direction to the 
genius and to the entire career of Bossuet, and which dominated all 
within him, was the Bible; it is said that the first time he read it he was 
illuminated and transported by it. He had found in it the source whence 
his own geuius was destined to flow, like one of the four great rivers in 
Genesis. 

Sainte-Beuve speaks of the relation of the Hotel de Ram- 

bouillet to the future great man: 

The young Bossuet was conducted thither one evening to preach there 
an improvised sermon. In lending himself to these singular exere’ses 
and to these tournaments where his person and his gifts were challenged, 
treated as an intellectual virtuoso in the salons of the Hotel de Ram- 
bouillet and the Hétel de Nevers, it does not appear that Bossuet was in. 
consequence subjected to the slightest charge of vanity, and there is no 
example of a precocious genius so praised, caressed by the world, and 
remaining so perfectly exempt from all self-love and from all coquetry. 
In the following passage, Sainte-Beuve appreciates, not 

without insinuated criticism, the younger eloquence of Bos- 
suet the preacher. Conceive this atheist critic, for such in 
effect Sainte-Beuve was, entering into the spirit of the 
orthodox Christian, exclusively for the purpose of justly 
judging and enjoying a strain of day eloquence! But that 
is Sainte-Beuve : 

When he portrays to us Jesus purposing to clothe himself with a flesh 
like our own, and when he sets forth the motives‘for this according to 
the Scriptures, with what bold relief and what saliency he does it! He 
exhibits that Saviour who above all seeks out misery and distress, shun- 


Sainte-Beuve. 989 


= 





ning to take on the angelic nature which would have exempted him from 
this, leaping over, in some sense, and tasking himself to pursue, to 
apprehend wretched human nature, precisely because it is wretched, cling- 
ing to it and running after it, although it flies from him, although it re- 
coils from being assumed by him; aiming to secure for himself real 
human flesh, real human blood, with the qualities and the weaknesses of 
our own, and that. for what reason? Jn order to be compassionate, Al- 
though in all this Bossuet only makes use of the terms of the Apostle 
and perhaps of those of Chrysostom, he employs them with a delight, a — 
luxury, a gust for reduplication, which bespeaks vivacious youth: “He 
has,” says the apostle, ‘apprehended human nature; it flew away, it 
would have nothing of the Saviour; what did he do? He ran after it 
with headlong speed, leaping over the mountains, that is to say, the ranks 
of the angels, ... He ran like a giant, with great strides and immeasur- 
able, passing in a moment from heaven to earth. . . . There he overtook 
that fugitive nature; he seized it, he apprehended it, body and soul.” 
Let us study the youthful eloquence of Bossuet, even in his risks of 
taste, as one studies the youthful poetry of the great Corneille. 


Sainte-Beuve cannot let Lamartine alone. In the clause 
following, italicized by us, our readers are to recognize an 
irony on the part of the critic: 


M. de Lamartine, who, with that second sight which is granted to poets, - 
knew how to see Bossuet distinctly as he was when young, ete. 


Having quoted, with significant italics disposed here and 
there, a highly realistic imaginary picture of the youthful 
- Bossuet from the hand of Lamartine, Sainte-Beuve says : 


Here is a primitive Bossuet much toned down and mollified, so it seems 
to me, a Bossuet drawn very much at will, to resemble Jocelyn and Fén- 
elon, in order that it may be said afterward [by Lamartine]: ‘“‘The soul 
evidently in this great man was of one temper, and the genius of an- 
other. Nature had made him tender; dogma had made him hard.” I do 
not believe in this contradiction in Bossuet, a nature having the most 
perfect harmony, and the least at war with itself, that we know. But 
what for me is not less certain is, that the illustrious biographer [Lam- 
artine] here treats literary history absolutely as history is treated in an 
historical romance; there you lightly invent your character, where your 
information fails, or where dramatic interest demands it. And without 
refusing the praise which certain ingenious and delicate touches of this 
portrait merit, I will permit myself to ask more seriously: Is it proper, 
is it becoming, thus to paint Bossuet as a youth, to fondle thus with the 


brush, as one would a Greek dancing-woman or a beautiful child of the’ 
13 


290 Classic French Course in English. 





English aristocracy, him who never ceased to grow under the shadow of 
the temple, that serious youth wlio gave promise of the simple great man, 
all genius and all eloquence? Far, far from him [Bossuet] these fon- 
dlings and these physiological feats of a brush which amuses itself with 
carmine and with veins. .. . 


You feel, with regard to the foregoing criticism, that it is 
as just as it is penetrative. Lamartine fairly provoked it. 

Here is a trait of Bossuet’s that pertained remarkably also 
to Daniel Webster: 


Bossuet is not one of those ingenious men of talent who have the art 
of treating commonplace subjects excellently, and of introducing into 
them foreign materials; but let the subject presented to him be vast, lofty, 
majestic, he is at his ease, and, the higher the theme, the more is he equal 
to its demands, on his proper plane, and in his element. 


The Abbé Maury is a critic belonging to the classical school 
of French literature. His best-known work is a treatise on 
pulpit eloquence. La Harpe is another critic of the same 
class with Maury, who has a considerable work, historical and 
critical, devoted to French literature in general. To these 
two writers Sainte-Beuve makes instructive allusion in the 
‘ following passage : 

Two opinions found expression when the Sermons of Bossuet were 
first published, in 1772; I have ‘already indicated that of the Abbé 
Maury, who placed these sermons above everything else of that kind 
which the French pulpit had produced; the other opinion, which was 
that of La Harpe, and which I have known to be shared since by other 
sensible men, was less enthusiastic and showed itself more sensitive to 
the inequalities and to the discordances of tone. It would be possible to 
justify both of these opinions, with the understanding that the first should 
triumph in the end, and that the genius of Bossuet, there as elsewhere, 
should keep the first rank. It is very true that, read continuously, with- 
out any notice of the age of the writer, and of the place and circum- 
stances of their composition, some of these discourses of Bossuet may 
offend or surprise minds that love to dwell upon the more uniform and 
more exact continuity of Bourdaloue or of Massillon. 


Victor Cousin is one among the somewhat numerous 
writers who, within the bounds of this same paper on Bos- 
suet, fall under the touch of Sainte-Beauve’s critical lance, 
that weapon borne ever in rest and ready for any encounter: 


Sainte-Beuve. teh 991 





A great writer of our days, M. Cousin. . . has been disposed once 
more to despoil Louis XIV. of his highest glory in order to carry it all back 
to the epoch preceding. M. Cousin has a convenient method of exaggerat- 
ing and aggrandizing the objects of his admiration: he degrades or de- 
presses their surroundings. It is thus that, to exalt Corneille, in whom he 
sees Adschylus, Sophocles, all the Greek tragic poets united, he sacrifices 
and diminishes Racine; it is thus that, in order the better to celebrate 
the epoch of Louis XIII. and of the regency which followed, he depresses 
the reign of Louis XIV. 


It is Sainte-Beuve’s specialty—in aim, whether in achieve- 
ment or not—to be without the tendency thus charged upon 
M. Cousin, to violate proportion in his criticism, The insin- 
uating delicacy of his adverse, or at least disparaging, criti- 
cal judgment toward a distinguished contemporary author is 
well exemplified in the following passage, in which the critic, 
by his instinct as critic, is irresistibly drawn to make a return 
to Cousin. . The wise reader familiar with Mr. Matthew Ar- 
nold will see how exactly the latter caught from his French 
master the trick of method here displayed : 

Ah, I cannot refrain from expressing another thought. When M,. 
Cousin speaks so at his ease of Louis XIV., of Louis XITI., and of Riche- 
lieu, confidently attributing superiority to that which he prefers and 
which he thinks resembles him, I am astonished that he has never once 
asked himself this question: “ What would have been the gain, what the 
loss to my own talent, this talent which is daily compared with that of 
the writers of the great age—what would have been gained or lost to that 
admirable talent” (I forget that it is he that is speaking) “if I had had to 
write or to discourse, were it but for a few years, in the very presence of 
Louis XIV., that is to say, of that royal good sense, calm, sober, and au- 
gust? And that which I should have thus gained or lost, in my vivacity 
and my eloquence, would it not have been precisely that which it lacks» 
in the way of gravity, of proportion, of propriety, of perfect justice, and, 
consequently, of true authority?” 

Lamartine does not escape still another light thrust from 
this dangerous delicate lance, aimed yet again, with exquisite 
accuracy, through an unquestionable joint in the victim’s 
harness: . 

“ These two rivals in eloquence,” says M. de Lamartine, speaking of Bos- 
suet and of Bourdaloue, ‘‘ were passionately compared. To the shame of the 
time, the number of Bourdaloue’s admirers surpassed in a short time that 


+ 299 Classic French Course in English. 





of the enthusiastic devotees of Bossuet. The reason of this preference 
for a cold argumentation above a sublime eloquence lies in the nature of 
human things. The men of middling stature have more resemblance to 
their age than the giants have to their contemporaries. The orators who 
deal in argument are more easily comprehended by the multitude than 
the orators who are fired with enthusiasm ; one must have wings to follow 
the lyric orator.” . .. This theory, invented expressly to give the greatest 
glory to the lyric orators and to the giants, is here at fault. M. de Baus- 
set, author of a work on Bossuet, has remarked, on the contrary, as a 
kind of singularity, that it never entered any man’s head at that time 
to consider Bossuet and Bourdaloue as subject of comparison, and to 
weigh in the balance their merit and their genius, as was so often done 
in the case of Corneille and of Racine; or, at least, if they were com- 
pared, it was but very seldom. To the honor and not to the shame 
of the time, the public taste and sentiment took note of the differ- 
ence. Bossuet, in the higher sphere of the episcopate, remained the 
oracle, the doctor, a modern Father of the Church, the great orator, who 
appeared on funeral and majestic occasions; who sometimes re-appeared 
in the pulpit at the monarch’s request, or to solemnize the assemblies of 
the clergy, leaving on each occasion an overpowering and ineffaceable 
recollection of his eloquence. Meanwhile Bourdaloue continued to be for 
the age the usual preacher by eminence, the one who gave a connected 
course of lectures on moral and practical Christianity, and who distrib- 
uted the daily bread in its most wholesome form to all the faithful. Bos- _ 

suet has said somewhere, in one of his sermons: “If it were not better 
suited to the dignity of this pulpit to regard the maxims of the Gospel as 
indubitable than to prove them by reasoning, how easily could I show 
you,” ete. There, where Bossuet would have suffered from stooping and 
subjecting himself to too long a course of proof and to a continuous argu- 
mentation, Bourdalone, who had not the same impatience of genius, was, 
beyond doubt, an apostolic workman who was more efficient in the long 
run, and better fitted for his task by his constancy. The age in which 
both appeared had the merit to make this distinction, and to appreciate 
each of them without opposing one to the other; and to-day those who 
glory in this opposition, and who so easily crush Bourdaloue with Bossuet, 
the man of talent with the man of genius, because they think they are 
conscious themselves of belonging to the family of geniuses, too easily 
forget that this Christian eloquence was designed to edify and to nourish 
still more than to please or to subdue, 


The “bright consummate flower” of Bossuet’s eloquence 
is to be found in his Funeral Discourses. Of one of these, 
Sainte-Beuve, with a sudden sympathetic swell of kindred 


Sainte-Beuve. 293 








eloquence in description, speaks, in a passage with quotation 
from which we close our exemplifications of this famous 
critic: 

The death of the Queen of England came to offer him (1669) the grand- 
est and most majestic of themes. He needed the fall and the restoration 
of thrones, the revolution of empires, all the varied fortunes assembled 
in a single life, and weighing upon one and the same head; the eagle 
needed the vast depth of the heavens, and, below, all the abysses and the 
storms of the ocean. 


It has been to us some satisfaction that the wrong of dis- 
tortion by reduction in scale done to the majestic figure of 
Bossuet in our own treatment of him, and unavoidable there, 
could thus in a measure be redressed by return to the subject 
in effective quotation from Sainte-Beuve. Looking back on 
the extracts preceding, we feel that enough is expressed, or 
suggested, in them, to justify us in saying, There is Bossuet. 

But at any rate we have great confidence in saying, There 
is Sainte-Beuve. 

3. Bawzac. 

Honoré de Balzac is one of the heroes of literature. He 
set himself labors of Hercules in literary production, and he 
toiled at his tasks of will with a tireless tenacity little less 
than sublime. The moral spectacle of such courageous in- 
dustry in Balzac, the present writer admires, not the less, but 
the more, that the intellectual achievement resulting seems to” 
him not commensurately great. Balzac’s long “ strain and en- 
deavor ” was not leavened and lightened and turned into play 
by that “reflex of unimpeded energy ” in him which a lofty 
philosopher has defined happiness to be. He did his work 
hardly—with profuse sweat of his brow. His mind did not 
answer to that definition of genius which makes it a faculty 
of lighting its own fires. His fires Balzac lighted with late 
hours, artificial illumination, strong stimulant drinks. He 
burned himself out early in life—comparatively early, that is 
to say; he died at fifty-one. 

The moral triumph of Balzac we have but half suggested. 
Not only did he lack the spontaneous joy of genius at work; 


294 Classie French Course in English. 





he lacked also, for many and many a doubtful year, the en- 
couragement of recognition and success. Book after book of 
his failed, and still he toiled on. The world was fairly con- 
quered at last. The reverse of Tulliver’s experience nape 
pened with Balzac. One man, in his Gade, pr oved “too many ” 
for the world. 

For his own part, he freely confesses, the present writer 
not only admires; he wonders. Balzac’s novels do not please 
him, either as products of genius or as works of art. They 
please him solely as monuments of victorious labor. They 
have to his mind exactly the quality that was to have been 
expected from the history of their production. They smell 
of oil, they smack of sweat. They are full of stimulated, 
rather than stimulating, thought. So much as one passage in 
which imagination played its magnificent play in easy and 
easily perfect creation, one passage in which the words flowed 
of themselves, and did not come each pumped with a several 
stroke of author’s will, he cannot remember ever to have found 
in Balzac. He wonders, therefore, and helplessly wonders, ° 
that Balzac should be esteemed, as he is, and that by some 
good judges, a great writer. 

What Balzac undertook was to write the whole “human 
tale of this wide world ”—that is, to represent in fiction all the 
manifold phases and aspects of human life and character. 
He calls the entire series of his novels “ The Human Comedy.” 
This title, we have seen it stated, was not original with Bal- 
zac, but was adopted by him at the suggestion of a friend 
who hit upon it as a kind of balance and contrast to Dante’s 
expression, “‘ Divine Comedy.” It is not quite a cynic con- 
ception of human character and human destiny that Balzac 
intended thus to express. Still, on the other hand, his view 
of human nature and human life cannot be said to be genial. 
The disagreeable preponderates in his fiction—the dis- 
agreeable one must call it, rather than the tragic. For true 
tragedy there is not height enough. In reading Balzac, you 
breathe for the most part an atmosphere of the not merely 
common, but—vulgar. Of course, the novelist himself would 


Balzac. 295 





have said, Very well, such is man, and suchis life. This one 
need not deny, but one can say, It was at least not desirable that 
readers should be obliged to feel the novelist to be himself 
vulgar, along with his characters. There is such a thing as 
refined dealing with people not refined. 

Realism was Balzac’s aim, and realism was the rock on 
which Balzac suffered double shipwreck. In seeking to be 
realistic, he became vulgar; and in seeking to be realistic, he 
became unreal. For there is an air of unreality diffused every- 
where over the pages, meant to be realistic or nothing, of this 
voluminous writer. Balzac evolved the personages of his fic- 
tion out of his own consciousness. They are none of them 
human beings, such as you meet in the real world. They are 
simulacra, images, bodiless projections, of the author’s own 
mind. They move over his canvas like the bs oie als thrown 
by the magic-lantern on its screen. 

Balzac and Dickens are sometimes paralleled. There cer- 
tainly is in a number of particulars a superficial resemblance 
between them. Both undertake to be realists. Both concern 
themselves chiefly with people of the average sort—sort, per- 
haps, even tending toward the vulgar. Both exaggerate toa 
degree that makes them at times almost caricaturists. Both 
deal abundantly in minute detail of description. But the 
contrast too between them is great. Balzac is far less spon- 
taneous than Dickens. You feel that Dickens improvises. 
You never feel this about Balzac. You can hear Balzac drive 
his Pegasus with shout and with lash. Dickens’s Pegasus often 
flies with his bit beween his teeth. Dickens was an observer 
of men and of things—of books, a student never; there is per- 
haps scarcely another instance in nineteenth-century litera- 
ture of an author who owed so little as did Dickens to study 
of books. From books, on the other hand, Balzac purveyed 
a large share of his material. Dickens writes as if uncon- 
scious that a race of men like the critics existed. Balzac 
writes in view of the critics. These in fact seem to be his 
audience quite as much as do the general public. Balzac, be- 
ginning that novel of his from which we are presently to 


296 Clussie French Course in English. 





draw our sole brief extract to exhibit his manner, enters, ac- 
cording to a fashion of his, upon an elaborate unnecessary de- 
scription of the house in which the scene of his action is laid. 
But he prefaces thus: 


Before describing this house, it may be well, in the interest of other 
writers, to explain the necessity for such didactic preliminaries, since 
they have raised a protest from certain ignorant and voracious readers 
who want emotions without undergoing the generating process, the flower 
without the seed, the child without gestation. Is Art supposed to have 
higher powers than Nature ? 


Such a sentence as that—prefatory, but in the body of 
the text, and not in a formal preface—would have been im- 
possible to Dickens. In Balzac, it is the most natural thing in 
the world. And it discloses the secret of the character every- 
where stamped on his production. He wrote as a profes- 
sional writer. He conformed to a law that he himself im- 
posed upon his genius, instead of leaving his genius free to 
be a law to itself. A real realist, a realist, that is to say, such 
by nature, and not merely by profession, a realist like De Foe, 
for example, could never have committed the offense against 
art of disturbing thus that very illusion of reality which he 
sought to produce, by exhibiting and defending the method 
adopted by him to produce it. There could not be a case 
imposing more obligation on the artist to conceal his art. 
But Balzac, instead, forces upon his reader the thought of 
art by calling its very name. 

Balzac paints with a big brush and puts on plenty of color. 
No one need fear in reading him that he will miss delicate 
shades. There are none such to miss. Balzac does not sug- 
gest.. He speaks right out. Nay, he insists. You shall by 
no means fail of understanding him. 

But, over against everything that can thus justly be said 
in diminution of his worth, there remain the unalterable facts 
of Balzac’s great reputation, of his voluminous literary 
achievement, of his population of imaginary personages pro- 
jected into the world of thought, the census of whom reckons, 
we believe, no less than two thousand poll, Every intelli- 


Balzac —° 297 





gent reader will wish to know something of such a man and 
-of his work. Mie 2 

Paralyzed to choose, even to think of choosing, out of the 
enormous volume of this writer’s laborious production, a sin- 
gle page for exemplifying his quality, we pitch desperately 
upon the conclusion of that story of his called by the accom- 
plished American translator of it, Miss Katharine Pres- 
cott Wormeley, “The Alkahest.” “The Search for the Ab- 
solute ” is the author’s own title. This work, belonging in 
the endless series of volumes dedicated to the display of the 
“‘Comedy of Human Life ” in all its phases, is a novel which 
undertakes to illustrate the effect on character and destiny 
of an exclusive supreme absorption in scientific pursuits. The 
hero has at length reached the catastrophe of his career. He 
is an old man who has wrecked fortune after fortune in chem- 
ical quest of a scientific chimera, The Absolute. A mono- 
maniac before, he is paralytic now, and the last night of his 
life is slowly passing. Balzac : 


The old man made incredible efforts to shake off the bonds of his 
paralysis ; he tried to speak and moved his tongue, unable to make a 
sound; his flaming eyes emitted thoughts; his drawn features expressed 
an untold agony; his fingers writhed in desperation; the sweat stood in 
drops upon his brow. In the morning, when his children came to his bed- 
side and kissed him with an affection which the sense of coming death 
made day by day more ardent and more eager, he showed none of his 
usual satisfaction at these signs of their tenderness. Emmanuel [the 
dying man’s son-in-law], instigated by the doctor, hastened to open the 
newspaper, to try if the usual reading might not relieve the inward crisis 
in which Balthazar was evidently struggling. As he unfolded the sheet 
he saw the words, “ DISCOVERY OF THE ABSOLUTE,” which startled him 
and he read a paragraph to Marguerite [the daughter] concerning a sale 
made by a celebrated Polish mathematician of the secret of the Absolute. 
Though Emmanuel read in a low voice, and Marguerite signed to him to 
omit the passage, Balthazar heard it. 

Suddenly the dying man raised himself by his wrists and cast on his 
frightened children a luok which struck like lightning; the hairs that 
fringed the bald head stirred, the wrinkles quivered, the features were 
illumined with spiritual fires, a breath passed across that face and rendered 
it sublime; he raised a hand, clenched in fury, and uttered with a piercing 
cry we famous words of Archimedes, ‘‘ Eureka! ”"—TI have found.” 

13 


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. He fell back upon his bed with the dull sound of an inert body, and 
died, uttering an awful moan, his convulsed eyes expressing to the last, 
when the doctor closed them, the regret of not bequeathing to science the 
secret of an enigma whose veil was rent away—too late—by the fleshless 
fingers of death, 


The reader there has Balzac at his highest and best. 

Those desirous of acquainting themselves with some in- 
tegral work of this author’s will choose wisely if they choose 
any one of these four: “ Pére Goriot,” “ César Birotteau,” 
“ Modeste Mignon,” “ The Alkahest ” (“ The Search for the 
Absolute”). These are all of them, with many more, obtain- 
able in good English translations, published by Messrs. Rob- 
erts Brothers, of Boston. 


4. GEORGE SAND. 


In virile quality, Madame de Stael seemed rediviva, or 
should we keep the more familiar masculine gender, and say 
redivivus ? in George Sand. “It only happened that she was 
a woman,” said some one, of the latter personage ; and in- 
deed the chance that made her such seemed half on the point 
of being reversed by the choice of the subject herself. For, 
besides that she has her fame permanently under a pseu- 
donym naturally betokening a man as its owner, it is a fact 
that she did, at one time, in order to greater freedom of 
the world, wear man’s clothes and otherwise play the man 
among her Parisian fellows. This episode in her experience 
doubtless helped give her that great advantage over other 
women, which her genius enabled her to use to effect so 
surpassing, ‘in describing the male human being such as he 
himself recognizes himself to be. 

The episode, however, was short, and George Sand is 
thought by her admirers—and her admirers include some 
very grave and self-respecting persons, the late Mr. Matthew 
Arnold being one example—never to have parted with a cer- 
tain paradoxical womanly reserve and delicacy which ought 
logically to have been quite lost out of her nature through 


George Sand. - 299 





the coarse and soiled contacts to which she herself willingly, 
and even wilifully, subjected it. 

But, poor George Sand! Let us never, in judging her, for- 
get how ill-bestead a childhood was hers, and how unhappy 
a marriage was provided for her warm and passionate youth. 
Her life began in protest, and protest was the early strength 
of her genius and her endeavor. She protested against things 
as they were, and, according to her light—a light sadly con- 
fused with misguiding cross-lights from many quarters be- 
sides her own eager self-will—fought, and pleaded, and wept, 
aspiring, hoping, believing, for an ideal world in which love 
should be law ; or rather an ideal world in which law should 
have ceased, and love should be all. From one of the last 
of her innumerable books, perhaps from the very last, Mr. 
Matthew Arnold translates this expression, which he repeats 
as summing up the motive of her work—* the sentiment of the 
ideal life, which is none other than man’s normal life as we 
shall one day know it.” 

The word “love” does not occur in this expression, but 
that word and that thought make the luminous legend over 
everything hers by the light of which everything hers is to 
be read and interpreted. 

Of course, George Sand’s “love” is not the sentiment 
which the apostle Paul sings in that prose canticle of his 
found in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians. But 
neither is it the purely animal passion that base souls might 
understand it. The peculiar affection natural between the 
sexes it indeed includes, but it includes much more. It in- 
cludes all domestic, all social affections. In short, it is love 
in the largest sense. The largest sense, but not the high- 
est. For it is love, the indulgence, the appetite; not love, 
the duty, the principle. George Sand’s gospel is that you 
may love and indulge yourself; Paul’s gospel is that you 
must love and deny yourself. Paul says love is the fulfilling 
of the law; George Sand virtually says love is the annulling 
of the law. 

Because in many passionate and powerful novels, read 


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everywhere in Europe and not only in France, read also in. 
America, George Sand has preached this gospel of love as 
the virtual solvent of existing society, Mr. Justin Macarthy 
pronounces the opinion that she is on the whole incomparably 
the greatest force in literature of her generation. He prob- 
ably would attribute to her as a, chief motor the porten- 
tous movements in human society which we of to-day feel, 
like tides of the sea, bearing us on, no one knows whither. 
It is no doubt true that George Sand has contributed what 
mechanicians call a “moment,” not sufficiently considered, to 
make up the urgency that is pushing us all in the direction 
toward uncalculated social solutions and social reconstruc- 
tions. This constitutes her a notable social force working by 
literature; a force, however, that has already chiefly spent 
itself, or that persists, so far as it does persist, translated in- 
distinguishably into other forms. 

For George Sand is no longer read as she formerly was, 
her fashion having already to a great extent passed away. 
It is a common testimony that, as she wrote like one impro- 
vising, so her writing is to be read once and not returned to. 
Her “Consuelo,” in its time such a rage, and still often spoken 
of as her masterpiece, is now even a little hard to get through. 
You yawn, you feel like skipping, you do skip, and you finally 
shut up the book wondering why such bright writing should 
make such dull reading. 

There occurred a sharp, decisive change, a change, however, 
not consistently maintained, in George Sand’s quality of pro- 
duction. From producing novels of social ferment, she 
turned to producing the quietest, most quieting, idyllic little 
stories in the world. There is a long list of such. “La 
Petite Fadette,” “Frangois le Champi,” “Les Maitres Son- 
neurs,” are among the best of them. From this last, con- 
summately well translated by our countrywoman, Miss 
Katharine Prescott Wormeley, who has Messrs. Roberts 
Brothers for her publishers, we shall offer a very short ex- 
tract in specimen. But first a short passage from one of her 
earlier books, in order that our readers may get a sense of the 


George Sand. 301 





change that she underwent, or rather—for no doubt the 
change was voluntary and calculated on her part— the 
change that she chose to make, in her manner. It is simply 
her two contrasted manners that we aim to illustrate—not at 
all, in either case, the matter or doctrine set forth. To illus- 
trate this last we should have no room, had we the inclina- 
tion. 

From “ Lélia,” we translate a passage descriptive of Al- 
pine scenery, or rather of the effect on the mind of Alpine 
scenery. After lighting upon this passage for our choice 
we found that Mr. Saintsbury too, in his “Specimens of 
French Literature,” had made the same selection, at double 
length, for his sole exemplification of George Sand. We are 
thus confirmed in trusting that we shall show our author, if 
far too briefly, still at her best : 


“Look where we are; is it not sublime, and can you think of aught else than 
God? Sit down upon this moss, virgin of human steps, and see at your 
feet the desert unrolling its mighty depths. Did ever you contemplate - 
anything more wild and yet more full of life? See what vigor in this free 
and vagfbond vegetation; what movement in those woods which the wind 
bows and sways, in those great flocks of eagles hovering incessantly 
around the misty summits and passing in moving circles like great black 
rings over the sheet, white ana watery, of the glacier. Do you hear the 
noise that rises and falls on every side? The torrents weeping and sob- 
bing like unhappy souls; the stags moaning with voices plaintive and pas- 
sionate, the breeze singing and laughing among the heather, the vultures 
screaming like frightened women; and those other noises, strange, mys- 
terious, indescribable, rumbling muffled in the mountains; those colossal 
icebergs cracking in their very heart; those snows, sucking and drawing 
down the sand; those great roots of trees grappling incessantly with the 
entrails of the earth and toiling to heave the rock and to rive the shale; 
those unknown voiées, those vague sighs, which the soil, always a prey 
to the pains of travail, here expires through her gaping loins; do you not 
find all this more splendid, more harmonious, than the church or the 
theater?” — 


With our utmost effort to convey, through close fidelity, 
the feeling of George Sand’s style, the delicious music of it, 
its sweet opulence of diction, its warmth of color, its easy 
spontaneity, its lubricity, its flow, we must ask our readers 


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to imagine all twice as charming as they could possibly find 
it in any translation. As to the substance of what is said in 
the foregoing sentences? Other travelers may have been 
more fortunate, but the present writer is obliged to admit 
that he never saw “great flocks,” or any flocks at all, of 
eagles “incessantly hovering around the summits” of the 
Alps. Indeed, the eagle is generally supposed to be a soli- 
tary bird, not inclined to fly in flocks. Also, he has never 
happened to meet with “stags” in the Alps, much less to 
hear them moan passionately or otherwise. ‘The vultures 
screaming,” etc.? Inshort, he would be quite unable to ver- 
ify in its details George Sand’s beautiful description, which 
he thinks must have been written from the heart of the 
writer, much more than from either her eye or her ear. 

Successive generations of readers are not apt to be satis- 
fied with merely subjective truth in what is offered them to 
read. There must be fact of some sort to correspond with 
statement, in order permanently to secure the future for an 
author. But feeling, rather than fact, at least in her 
earlier work, is the substance to which George Sand’s magical 
style gave such exquisite form. 

Now for a specimen passage done in her later manner. 

This we take from “ Les Maitres Sonneurs,” or “The Bag- 
pipers,” as Miss Wormeley renders the title. Brulette is a 
charming peasant girl, who, brought up in the same house 
with José, has known him only as a shy, recluse, silent, sullen, 
even downright stupid boy, if not indeed almost a “ natural.” 
He has cultivated music secretly, and he now makes trial of 
his art for the first time before Brulette. She turns away, 
and he is in despair, till he sees that she turned away to hide 
her fast-coming tears, He then demands to know what she 
thought of while he was playing. Brulette replies, and José 
in his turn expresses his mind : 


“T did not think of any thing,” said Brulette, ‘but a thousand recol- 
lections of old times came into my mind. I seemed not to see you play- 
ing, though I heard youclearly enough; you appeared to be no older than 
when we lived together, and I felt as if you and I were driven by a strong 


George Sand. 303 





wind, sometimes through the ripe wheat, sometimes into the long grass, 
at other times upon the running streams; and I saw the fields, the 
woods, the springs, the flowery meadows, and the birds in the sky 
among the clouds. I saw, too, in my dream, your mother and my 
grandfather sitting before the fire, and talking of things I could not 
understand; and all the while you were in the corner on your knees 
saying your prayers, and I thought I was asleep in my little bed. 
Then again I saw the ground covered with snow, and the willows full of 
larks, and the night full of falling stars; and we looked at each other, - 
sitting on a hillock, while the sheep made their little noise of nibbling the 
grass. In short I dreamed so many things that they are all jumbled up 

* in my head; and if they made me cry it was not for grief, but because 
my mind was shaken in a way I can’t at all explain to you.” 

“Ttis all right,” said José. ‘ What I saw and what I dreamed as I 
played, you saw too! Thank you, Brulette; through you I know now 
that I am not crazy, and that there is a truth in what we hear within us, 
as there is in what we see. Yes, yes,” he said, taking long strides up 
and down the room, and holding his flute above his head, “it speaks !— 
that miserable bit of reed! It says what we think; it shows what we see; 
it iells a tale as if with words; it loves like the heart; it lives; it has a 
being! And now, José, the mad man; José, the idiot; José, the. starer, 
go back to your imbecility; you can afford to do so, for you are as 
powerful, and as wise, and as happy as others.” 

So saying, he sat down and paid no further attention to any thing 
about him. 


Little speeches like the foregoing make up what, through- 
out the whole story of “The Bagpipers” does duty for 
dialogue between the characters. Charming, but in no 
proper sense of the word natural or verisimilar. 

George Sand and Balzac are often set in antithesis to each 
other as respectively idealistic and realistic writers. Differ- 
ent enough, indeed, they are, but the difference is that of 
temperament, of genius, and not that of method. Balzac 
is all conscience (his sort of conscience), will, work ; George 
Sand is all freedom, improvisation, play—around her every- 
where a nameless exquisite charm. 


5. De Musser. 


Alfred de Musset makes a melancholy figure in literary 
history. Few men ever had a more brilliant morning than 


804 Classic French Course in English. 





he ; few men ever an evening more somber. And De Mus- 
set’s evening fell at mid-day. Heine, with that bitterness 
which was his, could say of the still youthful poet, “A young 
man with a very fine future—behind him!” 

What De Musset accomplished, he accomplished by the 
pure felicity of genius—genius, flushed and quickened with 
the warm blood of youth. He did nothing in the way of 
-self-tasking, but all in the way of self-indulging. He obeyed 
whim, and not will. When the whim failed, he failed. 
Will indeed he seemed not to have, but only willfulness. 
He died at forty-seven, but he had already ceased living at 
forty. 

It is generally agreed that in what makes genius for the 
poet, namely, capacity of poetic feeling, propensity to poetic 
rhythm, command of poetic phrase, and power to see with 
the imagination, De Musset belongs with the foremost sing- 
ers of France. What he lacked was moral equipment to — 
match, We mean not moral goodness, though this, too, he 
missed, but moral strength. _He might have soared like the 
eagle, for he had eagle’s pinions ; but he had not the eagle’s 
heart, and after a few daring upward flights he fluttered 
ignobly downward, and thereafter, except at intervals too 
rare, kept the ground. Some charge this lamentable failure 
on De Musset’s part to the ill influence over him of George 
Sand, with whom in the fresh splendor of his young fame he 
entered into an unhappy “ relation”—a “relation ” sought 
by the woman in the case, who of the two was the older, 
She, as some think, sucked De Musset’s heart out of him like 
a vampire. But what a confession to make on the man’s be- 
half of flaccid moral fiber in him! Such a man, one would 
say, was certain to fall in due time prey to some one ; in de- 
fault of ther hunter, then prey to himself. It is one of the 
things least consistent with a favorable view of George 
Sand’s fundamental character that, two years after De Mus- 
set’s death, and some twenty years after the time of her “re- 
lation” with him, she should publish, thinly veiled under the 
form of fiction, a story of that relation, in which she herself 


De Musset. 305 





appeared vindicated, and the unhappy dead was held up to 
the laughter and contempt of Europe. Paul. De Musset, 
Alfred’s brother, replied in a book which claimed to set the 
facts in their true light before the world. Wretched 
wrangle! A little more of dull conformity on her part to 
things as she found them, and a little less of passionate pro- 
test against them in literature and in life, would have helped 
George Sand shun scandals that happily limit her influence 
as they deservedly darken her fame. There is too much rea- 
son to fear that this woman, in whom genius was certainly 
greater than was conscience, made, after the manner of 
Goethe, a deliberate study of De Musset in quest of material 
to be worked up in literary product. 

De Musset was greatest as poet, but he wrote admirable 
prose in novels and in comedies. He singularly combined 
capacity of hard and brilliant wit in prose dialogue with capac- 
ity of the softest, most dewy sentiment in musical verse. Some 
of his comedies are established classics of the French stage. 

We confine ourselves here to brief exhibition by specimen 
of what De Musset accomplished in that line of literary 
work in which he was greatest, namely, poetry. A quater- 
nion of pieces called “The Nights ” will supply us perhaps 
with our best single extract, at once practicable and char- 
acteristic. These pieces are entitled respectively “ Night 
of May,” “ Night of August,” “ Night of October,” “ Night 
of December.” They are couched in the form of dialogue 
between the poet and his muse. -Of course they are highly 
charged with autobiographic quality. - The poet poses in 
them very pensively before the public. The Byronic melan- 
choly, without the Byronic passion, pervades them. Our. 
extract we take, condensing it, from the “ Night of Decem- 
ber.” In it, De Musset’s muse talks to the poet in what 
might easily pass for an almost pious vein, We could make 
extracts in which the piety would be far, very far, less edify- 
ing, would in fact take on the characteristic dissolute French 
type of moral sentiment. His muse’s talk to the poet is 
somewhat such as might be imagined to be a confidential 


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consolatory strain of condescension from the goddess-mother 
Venus to her son, the Virgilian “ pious ”Aineas. We make our 
translation closely line for line, almost word for word. The 
rhyme we sacrifice for the sake of what we trust may seem 
to wise judges a fairly good approximation, otherwise im- 
possible in a literal rendering, to the spirit and rhythm of the 
original : 

Is it aimlessly, then, that Providence works, 

And absent, then, deem’st thou the God that thee smote? 

The stroke thou complainest of saved thee perchance, 

My poor child, for ’twas then that was opened thy heart. 

An apprentice is man, and his master is pain, 

And none knows himself until he has grieved. 

It is a stern law, but a law that’s supreme, 

As old as the world and as ancient as doom, 

That the baptism we of misfortune must take, 

And that all at this sorrowful price must be bought. 

The harvest to ripen has need of the dew, 

To live and to feel man has need of his tears, 

Joy has for its symbol a plant that is bruised 

Yet is wet with the rain and covered with flowers. 

Wast not saying that thou of thy folly wast cured? 

Art not young, art not happy, and everywhere hailed? 

And those airy-light pleasures which make life beloved, 

Jf thou never hadst wept, what worth to thee they ? 


Wouldst thou feel the ineffable peace of the skies, 
The hush of the nights, the moan of the waves, 

If somewhere down here fret and failure of sleep 
Had not brought to thy dream the eternal repose? 

Of what then complainest ? The unquenchable hope 
Is rekindled in thee ‘neath the hand of mischance. 
Why choose to abhor thy vanished young years, 

And an evil detest that thee better has made? 


Imagine the foregoing in its own original music, and in- 
vested with that hovering, wavering atmosphere of pathos 
which De Musset knew so well how to throw over his verse, 
and you will partly understand what the charm is of ‘this 
French poet to his countrymen, 


De Musset. 307 





De Musset shows something of the wit that he was, in the 
following bit of rhymed epigram, which, breaking up two 
stanzas for the purpose, we take from his poem entitled 
“ Namouna.” The rhymes were necessary here to convey the 
effect of smartness belonging to the original, and we accord- 
ingly preserve them: 

Lord Byron for model has served me, say you, 

You know not then Byron set Pulciin view ? 

Read up the Italians, you'll see if he stole. 

Nothing is any one’s, every one’s all. 

Dunce deep as a schoolmaster surely were he 

Who should dream left for him one word there could be 
That no man before him had hit upon yet; 

They somebody copy who cabbage-plants set. 


This self-vindicating epigram of De Musset’s may be pro- 
nounced clever rather than satisfactory. 

The juxtaposition and contrast of the two men irresistibly 
_provokes the reflection that De Musset was as much less than 
Balzac by inferiority of will as he was greater by superiority 
of genius. 


Already, such is the pace of progress in these last days of 
the nineteenth century, the “men of 1830” are beginning 
to seem a generation long gone by. The future will see 
whether their successors of the present time enjoy a more 
protracted supremacy. 


XXIV. 


JOUBERT: 11754-1824; Madame Swetchine: 1'782-1859; Amiel: 
1821-1881. 

We come now to that nineteenth-century group, fore- 
shadowed on an earlier page, of French pensée-writers. 

The longer lapse of time in JouBErt’s case, constantly 
confirming his claim to be a true classic, justifies us in placing, 
as we do, his name not only first but principal in the title to 
the present chapter. 


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Joseph Joubert presents the singular case of a man of let- 
ters living to a good old age, whose published literary work, 
and, therefore, whose literary fame, are wholly posthumous. 
He left behind him more than two hundred blank books filled 
with notes of thoughts which were to constitute after he died 
his title to enduring remembrance. 

_ Everything important surviving from his pen exists in the 
form of what the French call pensées. The sense of this word 
one of Joubert’s own pensées very well expresses: 


I should like to convert wisdom into coin, that is, mint it into maxims, 
into proverbs, into sentences, 6asy to keep and to circulate. 


Another of his pensées confesses, perhaps we should say 
rather, professes, what the ambition was that this most patient 
of writers indulged with reference to the literary form of his 
work: | : 


If there exists a man tormented by the accursed ambition of putting a 
whole book into a page, a whole page into a phrase, and that phrase into 
a word, that man is myself. 


Joubert was a natural unchangeable classicist in taste and 
spirit. The Periclean age of Greece, the Augustan age of 
Rome, the “great age” of France, that of Louis XIV., sup- 
plied Joubert with most of the books that fed his mind. He 
remained distinctively Christian in creed, though not nicely 
orthodox according to any accepted standard, Like so many 
of his literary compatriots, Joubert owed a great debt, for 
intellectual quickening, shaping, and refining, to brilliant and 
beautiful women. 

We show a few, too few, specimens that may indicate this 
gifted Frenchman’s rare and precious quality: 


Religion is a fire to which example furnishes fuel, and which goes out if 
it does not spread. ; 


The Bible is to the religions [of mankind], what the Iliad is to poetry. 


A comparison, the latter foregoing, however faulty by defect 
we may justly esteem it, loyally designed, of course, by the 
author to render profound homage to the Bible. 


- 


Joubert. 309° 





Only just the right proportion of wit should be put into a book; in 
conversation a little too much is allowable. 


We may convince others by our arguments; but we can persuade them 
only by their own, 
- Frankness is a natural quality ; constant veracity is a virtue. 


In pondering such golden sentences, one is constantly in- 
cited to make maxims one’s self ; which, indeed, is a part of 
the value of this kind of literature. 


Gravity is but the rind of wisdom; but it is a preservative rind. 


The foregoing happy English rendering of the French 
maxim we borrow from Mr. Henry: Attwell, who has pub- 
lished a selection of Joubert’s pensées translated, the trans- 
lation being accompanied with the original text. 


Children have more need of patterns than of critics. 


Children should be made reasonable, but they should not be made 
reasoners. The first thing to teach them is that it is reasonable for them 
to obey and unreasonable forthem to dispute. Without that, education 
would waste itself in bandying arguments, and every thing would be lost 
if all teachers were not clever cavillers, 


In a poem there should be not only poetry of images, but poetry of 
ideas. 


Words, like lenses, darken whatever they do not help us see, 


Buffon says that genius is but the aptitude for being patient. The 
aptitude for a long-continued and unwearying effort of attention is 
indeed, the genius of observation; but there is another genius, that of 
invention, which is aptitude for a quick, prompt, and ever-active energy 
of penetration, 


Buffon’s is a good working definition, to say the least—for 
genius of any sort. 
The end of a production should always call to mind its beginning. 
This may be compared to the law in musical composition 
requiring that a piece end in the key in which it began. 
Taste is the literary conscience of the soul. 


“Artistic,” instead of “literary,” Joubert might have 
widened his “thought” by saying. 


$10 Classie French Course in English. 





When there is born in a nation a man capable of producing a great 
thought, another is born there capable of understanding it and of admir- — 
ing it. 

That which astonishes, astonishes once; but that which is admirable 

is more and more admired. 


Fully to understand a great and beautiful thought requires, perhaps, 
as much time as to conceive it. 


A few individual literary judgments now, and we shall have 
shown from Joubert all that our room will admit: 


Seek in Plato forms and ideas only. These are what he himsel 
sought. There is in him more light to see by than objects to see, more 
form than substance. We Should breathe him and not feed on him. 


Homer wrote to be sung, Sophocles to be declaimed, Herodotus to be 
recited, and Xenophon to be read. From these different destinations of 
their works, there could not but spring a multitude of differences in their 
style. 


Xenophon wrote with a swan’s quill, Plato with a pen of gold, and 
Thucydides with a stylus of bronze. 


In Plato the spirit of poetry gives life to the languors of dialectics, 


Plato loses himself in the void; but one sees the play of his wings; one 
hears the noise of their motion. 


Cicero is, in philosophy, a kind of moon. His teaching sheds a light, 
very soft, but borrowed, a light altogether Greek, which the Roman has 
softened and enfeebled. 


Horace pleases the intellect, but he does not charm the taste. Virgil 
satisfies the taste no less than the reflective faculty. It is as delightful 
to remember his verses as to read them. 


There is not in Horace a single turn, one might almost say a single 
word, that Virgil would have used, so different are their styles, 


Behind the thought of Pascal, we see the attitude of that firm and 
passionless intellect. This it is, more than all else, which makes him so 
imposing. 

Fénelon knows how to pray, but he does not know how to instruct. 


We have in him a philosopher almost divine, and a theologian almost 
without knowledge. 


M. de Bausset says of Fénelon: “He loved men better than he knew 
them.” Charmingly spoken; it is impossible to praise more wittily what 
one blames; or better to praise in the very act of blaming. ; 


Joubert. - $11 





The plan of Massillon’s sermons is insignificant, but their bas-reliefs 
are superb. 


Montesquieu appears to teach the art of making empires; you seem to 
yourself to be learning it when you listen to him, and every time you 
read him you are tempted to go to work and construct one, 


Voltaire’s judgment was correct, his imagination rich, his intellect 
agile, his taste lively, and his moral sense ruined. z : 


It is impossible for Voltaire to satisfy, and impossible for him not to 
please. 


In Voltaire, as in the monkey, the movements are charming and the 
features hideous. One always sees in him, at the end of a clever hand, 
an ugly face. 


That oratorical “authority ” [weight of personal character] of which 
the ancients speak—you feel it in Bossuet more than in any other man; 
after him, in Pascal, in La Bruyére, in J. J. Rousseau even, but never in 
Voltaire. 


The style of Rousseau makes upon the soul the impression which the 
flesh of a lovely woman would make in touching us. There is something 
of the woman in his style. 


Racine and Boileau are not fountain-heads. A fine choice in imitation 
constitutes their merit. It is their books that imitate books, not their 
souls that imitate souls. Racine is the Virgil of the unlettered. 


Moliére is comic in cold blood. He provokes laughter and does not 
langh. Herein lies his excellence, 


Bernardin [St. Pierre] writes by moonlight, Chateaubriand by sunlight. 


The quality of both writers is such that we seem simply 
to be making the transition from masculine to feminine in 
going, as now we do, from Joubert to Madame Swetchine. 


Madame SweErTcuine lives, and deserves to live, in French 
literature—for, though Russian, she wrote in French—by 
the incomparable exquisiteness of her personal, expressing 
itself in her literary, quality. Purest of pure was she, as in 
what she wrote, so in what she was. Through sympathetic 
contemporary description she makes an impression as of 
one of Fra Angelico’s female saints released for a life from 
the fixed canonization of the canvas. 

Madame Swetchine’s life was chiefly spent in Paris, where 


$12 Classie French Course in English. 





the French language, already long before, in St. Petersburg, 
grown easy and tripping on her tongue, became to her a 
second, perhaps more familiar, vernacular. She was a high- 
born, high-bred, refined, and elegant woman of the world— - 
woman in the world we should rather say, for, in the. truest 
sense, of it she never was—who held brilliant, choicely- 
frequented salons, but who, without ostentation and without 
affectation, would go from her oratory, which indeed seems 
to have been a private “chapel,” in the full ecclesiastic sense 
of that word, to. her drawing-room ; who had even, as Sainte- 
Beuve indulgently, but with something of his inseparable 
irony, intimates, the effect of vibrating from the one to the 
other in the course of the same evening. Madame Swetchine 
was married young very unequally to a man twenty-five 
years her senior ; but she set the edifying example of half a 
century’s wifely devotion to that husband whom, at the wish 
of her father, well beloved, she had dutifully accepted in 
place of a noble young suitor, the choice of her own affec- 
tions. 

Two volumes—both of “Thoughts,” though one of them 
bears the title “ Airelles”—shut up within themselves the 
fragrance that was Madame Swetchine. We cull a few 
specimens: 

Often one is prophet for others only because one is historian for one’s 


self, 


The chains which bind us the closest are those which weigh on us the 
least. 


The best of lessons for many persons would be to listen at key-holes ; 
it is a pity for their sake that this is not honorable. 


Go always beyond designated duties, and remain within permitted 
pleasures. 
Upon the whole, there is in life only what we put there. 


I love knowledge; I love intellect ; I love faith—simple faith—yet more, 
I love God’s shadow better than man’s light. 


He who has ceased to enjoy his friend’s superiority has ceased to love 
him. 


Madame Swetchine. 313 





Since there must be chimeras, why is not perfection the chimera of all 
men? 


‘Woman is in some sort divine,” said the ancientGerman. “ Woman.” 
says the follower of Mahomet, “is an amiable creature who only needs a 
cage.” ‘“ Woman,” says the European, *‘is a being nearly our equal ia 
intelligence, and perhaps our superior in fidelity.” Everywhere something 
detracted from our dignity! 3 


No two persons ever read the same book or saw the same picture. 


Strength alone knows conflict. Weakness is below even defeat, and 1s 
born vanquished. 


We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what 
we refuse. 


Madame Swetchine was a woman of wealth and of leisure 
so-called ; but it may be doubted whether any poor woman 
in Paris worked harder. She carried with her when she 
went hence what, through all her conscientious activity, out- 
ward and inward, she had in her own being become ; and she 
found besides that ample further reward, unknown, which 
she had thus grown capable of receiving. 


Henri Fréderic Amret, who lived an almost silent life of 
sixty years—not quite silent, for he piped a volume or two 
of ineffectual verse—became a bruit of marvel and of praise 
soon after his death, through the publication from his 
“Journal Intime” [ Private Journal”] of a select number 
of his “Thoughts” found recorded there. How permanent 
a glow may prove to be the brightness of fame for Amiel 
thus suddenly outbursting, time only will decide. Already 
two very opposite opinions find expression concerning his 
merit—one applausive to the point almost of veneration, the 
other very freely irreverent. 

Both these two contradictory opinions admit of being 
apparently justified from the text of his “Journal.” Take 
vne following for an example on one side: 





Is not mind simply that which enables us to merge finite reality in the 
infinite possibility around it? Or, to put it differently, is not mind the 
universal virtuality, the universe latent? If so, its zero would be the germ 
of the infinite, which is expressed mathematically bythe double zero (00). 

14 


314 _ Classic French Course in English. 





The foregoing sentence is unintelligible enough to make, 
probably, the impression of pretty pure jargon on most minds. 
But in truth the amount of such writing in Amiel’s “ Jour- 
nal” is proportionally very small. 

Another line of entries in the “ Journal” tending to reflect 
disparagement upon the writer consists of reiterated con- 
fessions on Amiel’s part of morbid weakness of will, with 
habits of helpless morbid introspection, which, disappointing 
the hopes of his friends, practically shut him up his whole 
life long in a well-nigh total sterility of genius. On this 
count of the indictment against Amiel it is quite impossible 
to defend him. He was inexcusably non-productive. His 
“ Journal” itself shows that its author should have done 
more than that. 

This book, admirably translated into English by Mrs. 
Humphrey Ward, exhibits Amiel in the character of 
a man who always thought and felt and spoke and wrote on 
the side of what was pure and good and noble. He was a pro- 
foundly religious soul. As the years went on with him, and 
he became more and more the passive prey of his own eter- 
nally active thought, there appear to be registered some de- 
cline from the simplicity, and some corruption from the 
wholesomeness, of his earlier religious experience. In fact, 
he at last seems to let go historical Christianity altogether, 
still clinging, however, pathetically to God, as Father, all the 
time that he regards God’s fatherly providence over the world 
‘as only a subjective beautiful illusion of faith existing in his 
own imaginative mind! 

Amiel judges the present age and the current tendency of 
things: 

The age of great men is going. . . . By continual leveling and division 
of labor society will become everything and man nothing... . A plateau 
with fewer and fewer undulations, without contrasts aud without oppo- 
sitions—such will be the aspect of human society. The statistician will 
register a growing progress, and the moralist a gradual decline; on the 
one hand, a progress of things; on the other, a decline of souls. The 


useful will take the place of the beautiful, industry of art, political 
economy of religion, and arithmetic of poetry. 


Amiel. 315 





He writes to himself a sort of “ spiritual letter” that 
mizht almost have been Fénelon’s (the date is 1852, he was 
therefore now thirty-one years old): 


We receive everything, both hfe and happiness; but the manner in 
which we receive, this is what is still ours. Let us, then, receive trust- 
fully without shame or anxiety. Let us humbly accept from God even 
our own nature, and treat it charitably, firmly, intelligently. Not that 
we are called upon to accept the evil and the disease in us, but ‘let us ac- 
cept ourselves in spite of the evil and the disease. 


The first following “thought” is a deep intuition: 


There are two states or conditions of pride. The first is one of self- 
approval, the second one of self-contempt. Pride is seen probably at its 
purest in the last. , 


To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do 
what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius. 


Chateaubriand posed all his life as the wearied Colossus, smiling piti- 
fully upon a pigmy world, and contemptuously affecting to desire nothing 
from it, though at the same time wishing it to be believed that he could 
if he pleased possess himself of every thing by mere force of genius. 


We are never more discontented with others than when we are dis- 
contented with ourselves. 


To grow old is more difficult than to die, because to renounce a good 
once and for all costs less than to renew the sacrifice day by day and in 
detail. ' 


From entries fourteen years apart in date, we bring to- 
gether, abridging them, two expressions of Amiel about 
_ Victor Hugo: 


His ideal is the extraordinary, the gigantic, the overwhelming, the in- 
commensurable. His most characteristic words are immense, colossal, 
enormous, huge, monstrous. He finds a way of making even child-nature 
extravagant and bizarre. The only thing which seems impossible to him 
is to be natural. 


He does not see that pride is a limitation of the mind, and that a pride 
without limitations is alittleness of soul. Ifhe could but learn to com- 
pare himself with other men, and France with other nations, he would 
see things more truly, and would not fall into these mad exaggerations, 
these extravagant judgments. But proportion and fairness will never be 
among the strings at his command. He is vowed to the Titanic; his 
gold is always mixed with lead, his insight with childishness, his reason 


316 Classic French Course in English, 





with madness. He cannot be simple; the only liglit lie has to give 
blinds you like that of a fire. He astonishes a reader and provokes him, 
lie moves him and annoys lim, There is always some falsity of note in 
him, which accounts for the malaise he so constantly excites in me. The 
great poet in him cannot shake off the charlatan. A few shafis of 
Voltairean irony would have shriveled the inflation of his genius and 
made it stronger by making it saner. It is a public misfortune that the 
most powerful poet of a nation should not have better understood his 
réle, and that, unlike those Hebrew prophets who scourged because they 
loved, he should devote himself proudly and systematically to the flattery 
of his countrymen. Franceis the world; Paris is France; Hugo is Paris; 
peoples, bow down! 


Amicl had a just perception of the immense healing virtue 
lodged in happiness: 


What doctor possesses such curative resources as those latent in a 
spark of happiness or a single ray of hope? 


A vent of frank French distaste for the German type of 
book. Amiel had been reading the great nineteenth-century 
philosopher Lotze: 


The noise of a mill-wheel sends one to sleep, and these pages without 
paragraphs, these interminable chapters, aud this incessant dialectical 
clatter, affect me as though I were listening to a word-mill. I end by 
yawning like any simple non-philosophical mortal in the face of all this 
heaviness and pedantry. Erudition and even thonght are not every- 
thing. An occasional touch of esprit, a little sharpness of phrase, a little 
vivacity, imagination, and grace, would spoil neither. 


He who is too much afraid of being duped has lost the power of being 
magnanimous. 


The following shows a good heart as well as a wise head: 


The errand-woman has just brought me my letters. Poor little woman, 
what a life! She spends her nights in going backwards and forwards 
from her invalid lusband to her sister, who is scarcely less helpless, aud 
her days are passed in labor. Resigned and indefatigable, she goes on 
witliout complaining, till she drops. 

Lives such as hers prove something. ... The kingdom of God be- 
longs not to the most enlightened but to the best; and the best man is 
the most unselfish man. Humble, constant, voluntary self-sacrifice—this 
is what constitutes the true dignity of man... . Society rests upon 
eouscienece and not upon science. Civilization is, first and foremost, a 
moral thing. 


Anviel. « 817 





He first passes judgment on Goethe, and then afterward 
checks himself: 


He [Goethe] has so little soul. His way of understanding love, relig- 
ion, duty, and patriotism has something mean and repulsive in it. There 
is no ardor, no generosity, in him. A secret barrenness, an ill-concealed 
egotism, makes itself felt through all the wealth and flexibility of his 
talent. 


One must never be too hasty in judging these complex natures. Com- 
pletely lacking as he is in the sense of obligation and of sin, Goethe 
nevertheless finds his way to seriousness through dignity. Greek sculp- 
ture has been his school of virtue. 


Under date 1874, Amiel asks a question and answers it. 
He had before said, “ My creed has melted away” 


Js there a particular Provence directing all the circumstances of our 
life, and therefore imposing all our trials upon us for educational ends? 
Is this heroic faith compatible with our actual knowledge of the laws of 
nature? Scarcely. But what this faith makes objective we may hold as 
subjective truth, .. . What he [the moral being] cannot change he calls 
the will of God, and to will what God wills brings him peace. 


A melancholy fall from his earlier state! A whole sky be- 
tween such conscious false motions toward self-deceiving and 
the victory which overcomes the world, even our faith. Amiel 
had now definitely lost his health. 

Toward the end, occurs this striking and illuminating word 
about one of the worst of human passions: 


Jealousy is a terrible thing. It resembles love, only it is precisely 

love’s contrary. Instead of wishing for the welfare of the object loved, 

* it desires the dependence of that object upon itself, and its own triumph. 

Love is the forgetfulness of self; jealousy is the most passionate form of 

- egotism, the glorification of a despotic, exacting, and vain ego, which can 
neither forget nor subordinate itself. The contrast is perfect. 


Doubting Amiel still thinks that Christ is better than 
Buddha: 


Sorrow is the most tremendous of all realities in the sensible world, 
but the transfiguration of sorrow, after the manner of Christ, is a more 
beautiful solution of the problem than the extirpation of sorrow, after the 
method of Cakyamouni [Buddlia]. 


318 Classic French Course in English. 





Amiel was a naturally noble spirit, not equal to making for 
himself the career that he needed. [Tut the right career, 
made for him, would have left to history and to literature a 
very different, man from the writer of Amiel’s “ Journal.” 


The very latest conspicuous French candidate for renown 
as a writer of pensées is Joseph Roux, a rural Roman Cath- 
olie priest, and a man still living. Out of a volume of his 
“Thoughts ” lately translated and published in America un- 
der the title of “ Meditations of a Parish Priest,” we show 
the following specimen of literary criticism peculiarly perti- 
nent to the subject of the present chapter: 

Pascal is somber, La Rochefoucauld bitter, La Bruyére malicious, 


Vanvenargues melancholy, Chamfort acrimonious, Joubert benevolent, 
Swetchine gentle. 


Pascal seeks, La Rochefoucauld suspects, La Bruyére spies, Vauven- 
argues sympathizes, Chamfort condemns, Joubert excuses, Swetchine 
mourns. 


Pascal is profound, La Rochefoucauld peuetrating, La Bruyére sa- 
gacious, Vauvenargues delicate, Chamfort paradoxical, Joubert ingenious, 
Swetchine contemplative. 


Pensé -writing has gained such headway in France, there 

is so much literary history behind it there, and it is in itself 

so fascinating a form of literary activity, that, in that country 
at least, the fashion will probably never pass away. 


xXXV. 
EPILOGUE. 


How much author’s anguish of self-tasking and of self- 
denial, in exploration, study, selection, rejection, condensa- 
tion, retrenchment, to say nothing of the anxiety to be clear 
in expression, to be true, to be proportionate, to be just, 
finally, too, to be entertaining as well as instructive—this 
little book has cost the producer of it, no one is likely ever 
to guess that has not tried a similar task with similar appli- 
cation of conscience himself. 


Epilogue. 319 





For instance, to name Ronsard, the brilliant, the once soy- 
ereign Ronsard—lately, after so long occultation of his orb, 
come, through the romanticists of to-day, or shall we write 
“of yesterday”? almost to brightness again—to name this 
poet, without at least giving in specimen the following cele- 
brated sonnet from his hand, which, for the sake of making 
our present point the clearer, we may now show in a neat 
version by Mr. Andrew Lang (but why should Mr. Lang, in 
his fourth line, change Ronsard’s “fair” to “ young ” ?): 


When you are very old, at evening 
You'll sit aud spin beside the fire, aud say, 
Humming my songs, “* Ah well; ah well-a-day |! 
When I| was young, of me did Ronsard sing.” 
None of your maidens that doth hear the thing, 
Albeit with lier weary task foredone, 
But wakens at iny name, and calls you one 
Blest, to be held in long retrembering. ° 


T shall be low beneath the earth, and laid 

On sleep, a phantom in the myrtle shade, 
While you bes de tie fire, a grandume gray, 

My love, your pr.de, remember and regret ; 

Ah, love me, love! we may be happy yet, 
And gather roses while ’tis called to-day: 


—then, for another instance, to pass over Boileau and not 
bring forward from him even so much as the following char- 
acteristic epigram, wherein this wit and satirist pays his sar- 
castic respects to that same poet Cotin whom (pp. 81 ff.) we 
showed Moliére mocking under the name of “Trissotin” 
(here we must do our own translating): 
In vain, with thousandfold abuse, 
My foes, through all their works diffuse, 
Have thought to make me shocking to mankind; 
Cotin, to bring my style to shame, 
Has played a much more easy game, 
He has his verses to my pen assigned— 


to achieve, we say, these abstinences, and abstinences such 
as these, was a problem hard indeed to solve. 
The result of all is before the reader ; and, good or bad, 


320 Classic French Course in English,” 





it is, we are bound to confess, the very best that, within the 
given limits, we could do. Such students of our subject as 
we may fortunately have succeeded in making hungry for 
still more knowledge than we ourselves supply, we can con- 
scientiously send, for further partial satisfaction of their de- 
sire, to the series of books, already once named by us, now 
in course of publication at Chicago, under the title, “The 
Great French Writers.” Messrs. A. C. McClurg & Co. have 
done a true service to the cause of letters in general, and in par- 
ticular to the cause of what may be called international letters, 
in reproducing this series of books. They are good books, 
they are well translated, and they appear in handsome form. 
Madame de Sévigné, Montesquieu, and three names that, to- 
gether with a!l of their several kinds, economists, philoso- 
pers, historians, we here have been obliged to omit, Turgot, 
Vietor Cousin, Thiers, are in the list of authors treated in 
the volumes already issued. 


An interesting.doubt may, in retrospect of all, be submitted, 
without author’s solution supplied, to entertain the specula- 
tion of the wisely considerate reader. Let the earlier still 
living French literature, that part of the whole body, we 
mean, ending, say, with the date of Montesquieu, which, in 
a rough approximate way, may be described as dominated by 
the spirit of classicism—let this be compared with the later 
French literature, that section in which the leaven of romanti- 
cism has strongly worked, and do you find existing an im- 
portant fundamental difference in intimate quality between 
the one and the other? Is the later literature of a certain 
softer fiber, a more yielding consistence, than characterizes 
the earlier? Does the earlier present a harder, more quartz- 
like structure, a substance better fitted to resist yet for ages 
to come the slow but tireless tooth of time ? 


EUN DD Bs 





[The merest approximation only can be attempted in hinting here the pronuncia- 
tion of French names. In general, the French distribute the accent pretty evenly 
among all the syllables of their words. We mark an accent on the final syllable 
chiefly in order to correct a natural English tendency to slight*that syllable in 


pronunciation. 
stand. 
equivalent in English. 


N notes a peculiar nasal sound, 


In a few cases we let a well-established English pronunciation 


ii, a peculiar vowel sound, haying no 





Ab/é-lard, Pierre (1079-1142), 13. 

Academy French. 16, 62, 119, 238, 264. 

Z€s’chy-lus, 77, 118, 127, 128. 

Zésop, 69. 

Alembert. See D’Alembert. 

Al-ex-an’der (the Great), 12, 103, 

AM’1-EL, Henri Frédéric, 313-318, 

Am-y-ot’ (am-e-o’), Jacques (1513-1593), 
14, 

An-ae’re-on, 256. 

Anderson, Melville B., 281. 

An/’ge-lo, Michael, 120, 282. 

Ariosto, 298, 

Ar-is-toph‘a-nes, 32. 

Ar-nauld’ (ar-no’), Antoine (1612-1694), 
94, 

Arnold, Matthew, 248, 276, 291, 298, 299, 

Arthur (King), 12. 

Attwell, Henry, 309. 

Au’-gus-tine, St., Latin Christian Father, 
67. 

Au-gus’tus (the emperor), 103. 


Bacon, Francis, 43, 53. 

Baker, Jehu, 185. 

BAL/ZAC, Honoré de (1799-1850), 174, 
275, 293-298, 303. 

Bal’zac, Jean Louis Guez de (1594-1654), 
15, 16. - 

Beau-mar-chais’ (bd-mar-sh’4), Pierre 
Augustin Caron de (1732-1799), 239. 

BE-RAN-GER (ba-ron-zha’), Pierre Jean 
de (1780-1857), 13, 256-263. 

Ber-si-er’ (bér-see-a’), Eugene, 157 


14% 





Bismarck, 244, 

Boi-leau’-Des-pré-aux’ (bwi-16-da-pra-o’), 
Nieolas (1636-1711), 14, 17, 18, 67, 68, 
127, 128, 130, 285, 311, 319. 

Bolton, A. §., 57. 

BOS-SU-ET’ (bo-sii-a’), Jacques Bénigne 
(1627-1704), 16, 17, 62, 63, 100, 127, 129, 
137-142, 153, 154, 157, 158, 161, 162, 184, 
286-293, 311. 

BUUR-DA-LOUE’, Louis (1632-1704), 10, 
17, 63, 111, 115, 187, 140, 142-148, 150, 151, 
291, 292. = 

Bryant, William Cullen, 69, 70. 

Bryce, James, 192. 

Buckle, Henry Thomas, 189. 

Buffon (bii-fon), Georges Louis Leclere de 
(1707-1788), 238, 309. 

Bur’gun-dy, Duke of (1682-1712), 133, 134, 
159, 160, 161, 164, 165, 

Burke, Edmund, 43, 61, 192, ~ 

Burns, Robert, 256. 

Bussy (biis-se’), Count, 105, 

By’ron, Lord, 43, 307. 


Ceesar, Julius, 48, 103. 

Calas (ci-li’), Jean, 211. 

Calvin, John (1509-1564), 13, 

Carlyle, Thomas, 209, 212. 

Catherine (Empress of Russia), 237. 

Cham-fort’/ (shaN-for’), Sebastien Roch 
Nicolas (1741-1794), 69, 261, 318. 

Char-le-magne (shar-le-man), 12. 

Charles I. (of England), 129, 139, 

Charles IX. (of France), 53. 


322 


Classie French Course in English—Index. 





CHA-TEAU-BRI-AND’ (shi-t6-bre-in’) 
Frangois Auguste de (1768-1848), 10, 18, 
159, 175, 226, 229, 248-255, 276, 311, 315. 

Cicero, 63, 310. 

_ “Classicism,’’ 15, 18, 275, 276. 

Claude (kl0d), Jean (1619-1687), 137. 

Coleridge, S. T., 13, 33, 38, 39, 

Comines (ko-meen’), Philippe de (1445- 
1509), 18, 26, 29. 

Condé (kon-di’), Prince of, **The Great 
Condé ” (1621-1686), 112. 

Condillac (kKoN-de-yik), Etienne Bonnot 
de (1715-1780), 238. . 

Condoreet (koN-dor-sa’), Marie Jean An- 
toine Nicolas Caritat de (1743-1794), 
100, 101. 2 

Constant (koN-sto/N), Benjamin (1767- 
1830), 243, 

Coquerel (kok-rel’), Athanase Laurent 
Charles (1795-1868), 157. 

CORNEILLE (kor-nal’), Pierre (1606- 
1684), 10, 16, 17, 19, 64, 65, 117-127, 129, 
187, 138, 200, 285, 291, 292. 

Cotin (ko-tan’) Abbé (17th century), 81, 319, 

Cotton, Charles (1630-1687), 40, 43, 45. 

Cousin (koo-zan’), Victor (1792-1867), 101, 

290, 291, 320. 

Cowper, William, 173. 


D’Alembert (di-lin-bér’), Jean le Rond 

+ (1717-1783), 17, 210, 238. 

Dante, Alighieri, 76, 77, 91, 281. 

Demosthenes, 63. 

Descartes (da-kirt’), René (1596-1650), 16, 
83, 92. 

D'Holbach (dol-bik’), Paul Henri Thyry 
(1723-1789), 235, 

Dickens, Charles, 33, 116, 295, 296. 

DIDEROT (de-dro), Denis (1713-1784), 
17, 191, 209, 236, 237, 238, 285. 

Dryden, John, 43, 127. 

. Duclos (dii-k10’), Charles Pineau (1704- 

17°72), 238. 


“ Berasez U' Infdme,” 210, 

Edward (the Black Prince), 24, 26. 
Edwards, President Jonathan, 145. 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 48, 45, 52. 
Encyclopzedists, 17, 167, 209, 235-239, 249. 
Epictetus, 54. 

Erasmus, 389, 99, 

Euripides, 64, 118, 127, 129. 


Fabliaux (fab’le-6’), 12. 


Faugére (f6-zhér’), Arnaud Prosper (1810), 
101. 





Félix, Pére, 157. 

Fénelon (fan-lon’), Francois de Salignac 
de la Mothe (1651-1715), 17, 134, 137, 153, 
158-173, 310, 315. 

Fléchier (fla-she-a’), Esprit (1632-1710), 137. 

Foix (fw&), Count of, 27, 28. 

FROISSART (frwi-sar’), Jean (1337- 
1410 ?), 13, 22-29, 


Gaillard (ga-yar’), Gabriel Henri (1726- 
1806), 119. 

Gargant/ua, 29, 34-37. 

Gibbon, Edward, 118, 241. 

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 184, 229, 244, 
245, 281, 305, 317. 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 67, 184, 269. 

Grignan (green-yin’), Madame de, 108. 

Grimm, Friedrich Melchior (1723-1807), 
238. 

Grimm, Herman, 244, 

Guizot, Francois Pierre Guillaume (1787- 
1874), 199, 820. 

Guyon (ge-yon’) Madame (1648-1717), 161, 
172, 173. 


Hallam, Henry, 21, 33. 

Havet (-va’) (editor of Pascal’s works), 
101, 

Hawkesworth, Doctor, 169. 

Hazlitt, William Carew, 43. 

Helvétius (el-v4-se-iiss’), Claude Adrien 
(1715-1771), 238. 

Henriette, Princess, 129, 139. 

Henry of Navarre (Henri IV. of France), 
53, 202. 

Herodotus, 13, 22, 310. 

Holbach. See D’Holbach. 

Homer, 14, 31, 32, 77, 206, 208, 310, 

Hooker (‘* The Judicious”’), 158. 

Horace, 32, 206, 256, 310. 

HUGO (ii-go’), VICTOR Marie (1802- 
1885), 18, 19, 77, 256, 257, 274, 275-285, 
815, 316. 

Hume, David, 43, 226. 

Hutson, Charles W., 21. 

Hyaciuthe (e’i’san), Pére (1827-), 157, 


Job, 77, 161, 281. 

Johnes, Thomas, 22. 

Joinville (zhw4n veel’), Jean de (1224?- 
1319 ?), 13. 

JOUBERT (zhoo’bir), Joseph (1754-1824), 
65, 807-311. 

Julian (The Apostate), 135, 

Juvenal, 62. 


Classic French Course in English—Indx. 323 





La Boétie (li-bo-a-té’), 49, 50, 

Laboulaye (li’boo-la’), Edouard René Le- 
febvre, 196. 

LA BRUYBRE (li-brii-e-yér’), Jean 
(1646 ?-1696), 17, 62-64, 118, 138, 311, 318. 

Lacordaire (la-kor-dér’), Jean Baptiste 
Henri (1802-1861), 157. 

LA FONTAINE (li-fon-tan’) Jean de 
(1621-1695), 17, 66-75. 

La Harpe (li-arp), Jean Francois de, 290. 

LAMARTINE (li-mar-tan’), Alphonse 
Marie Louis de (1790-1869), 18, 159, 175, 
229, 263-274, 287, 289, 290, 291. 

Lang, Andrew, 280, 319, 

Langue d’oc, 11, 

Langue d’oil, 11, 

Lanier, Sidney, 27. 

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD (l4-résh-foo- 
k0’), Francois, Due de (1613-1680), 17, 43, 
55-62, 103, 106, 114. 

Longfellow, Henry W., 44. 

Lotze, Rudolf Hermann, 316. 

Louis IX. (1215-1270) (St. Louis), 12, 13. 

Louis XI. (1423-1483), 13. 

Louis XIII. (1601-1643), 15, 77, 291. 

Louis XIV. (1638-1715) (Quatorze), 15, 17, 
106, 130, 133, 136, 137, 138, 142, 143, 148, 
149, 157, 159, 166, 167, 170, 291. 

Louis XV. (1710-1774), 149, 212. 

Louis XVIII. (1755-1824), 249. 

Louis Napoleon (1808-1873), 193, 259, 261, 
266, 277. 

Louis Philippe (1773-1850), 192, 199, 249, 
257, 264. 

Lucan, 117, 118, 201. 

Lucretius, 77, 127. 

Luther, Martin, 13, 37. 


Machiavelli, 192. 

Maintenon (maN-teh-non’), Madame de 
(1635-1719), 130, 136, 142, 161, 162. 

Maistre (métr), Joseph Marie de (%53- 
1821), 255. 

Malherbe (miil-érb’), Francois (1555-1628), 
15, 18. - 


Martin (mar tan’), Henri (1810- ), 138. 


MASSILLON (miis-se-y6n’), Jean Bap-. 


tiste (1668-1742), 10, 17, 115, 187, 142, 147, 
148-158, 157, 311, 

Matthews, William, 287. 

Maury, the Abbé, 290. 

McCarthy, Justin, 300. 

M’Crie, Thomas, 94. 

Menander, 75. 

Milton, John, 75, 137, 158, 207, 208. 





MOLIERE (mo lei-ér’) (real name, Jean- 
Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673) 17, 19, 67, 
75-91, 100, 119, 126, 127, 176, 201; 311, 319, 

Moltke, Count von, 194, 244. 

Monod (mo/’no’), Adolphe, 157. 

Monod, Frédéric, 157. 

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 116. 

MONTAIG\E (mon-tan’),Michel Eyquem 
de (1533-1592), 10, 13, 14, 40-54, 56, 61, 
103, 190, 214. 

Montespan (moNn-téss-pin’), Madame de 
(1641-1707), 109. 

MONTESQUIEU (mon -tés-ke-uh’), 
Charles de Secondat de (1639-1755,), 17, 
167, 184-191, 192, 199, 311, 320. 

Morley, John, 118, 203, 209, 237. 

Motteux, Peter Anthony (1660-1718), 30. 

MUSSET (mii-sé’), (1810-1857), Alfred de, 
275, 303-307. 

Musset, Paul de, 305. 


Napoleon Bonaparte, 18, 153, 240, 241, 242, 
244, 248, 249, 259, 282. 

Nettleton, W. A., 91. 

Newton, Sir Isaac, 92. 

Nicole (ne-kol’), Pierre (1625-1695), 10, 114, 
128 . 


‘** Obscurantism ”’ (disposition in the sphere 
of the intellect to love darkness rather 
than light), 210. 


Pan-tag’ru-el, 29, 35, 37, 38. 

Pauurge (pii-niirzh’), 37, 38. 

PASCAL, Blaise (1623-1662), 10, 16, 17, 48, 
52, 54, 65, 91-104, 115, 145, 310, 311, 318. 

Pascal, Jacqueline, 92. 

Pericles, 247. 

Petrarch, Francesco, 23. 

Pheedrus, 69. 

Pindar, 256. 

Plato, 30, 45, 188, 208, 240, 318. 

** Pleiades ” (ple’ya-dez), 14, 15, 18. 

Plutarch, 14, 31, 42, 48, 215. 

** P6-co-cu’rant-ism,”’ 208, 

Pompadour, Madame de (1721-1764), 212. 

Pompey, 48. 

Pope, Alexander, 43, 127. 

Poquelin (po-ke-14N’). See Moliére. 

Port Royal, 94, 100, 128, 287. 

Pradon (prii-don’), 129, 130. 

Provencal (pro-vaN-sal), 11. 

Ptolemy Philadelphus, 14. © 


Classic French Course in English—Index. 





RABELAIS (ri-bli), Francois (1495 ?- 
1553 ?), 10, 18, 29-89, 50, 54, 67, 113, 114. 
RACINE (ri-seen’), Jean (1639-1699), 17, 
64, 65, 67, 117, 118, 127-137, 158, 285, 291, 

292, 311. 

Rambouillet (roN-boo-ya), Hétel de, 15, 16, 
81, 84, 120, 188, 288. 

Récamier (ra-kii-me-a’) Madame (1777- 
1849), 16, 239,240, 244, 255. 

Renan (reh-ndn’), Joseph Ernest (1823), 
285. 

Richelieu (résh-le-uh’), Cardinal, (1585- 
1642), 15, 16, 77, 119, 291. 

** Romanticism,” 18, 275, 276. 

Ronsard (ron-sar’), Pierre de, (1524-1585), 
14, 15, 319. 

Rousseau (roo-sd’), Jean Baptiste (1670- 
1741), 212. 

ROUSSEAU, Jean Jacques (1712-1778), 
10, 17, 18, 48, 159, 167, 175, 209, 212-228, 
229, 284, 288, 239, 249, 311. 

Roux (roo), Joseph (living), 318. 

Ruskin, John, 60. 

Rutebeuf (rii-te-buf’) (b:1230), trouvére, 12. 


Sabliére (si-bli-ér’), Madame de Ja, 67, 68. 

Saci (sii-se’), M. de, 54. 

Saintsbury, George, 20, 49, 301. 

SAINTE-BEUVE (sint-buy’), Charles 
Augustin (1804-1869), 15, 18, 142, 145, 
148, 190, 255, 256, 275, 285-293. 

SAND (sind), GEORGE (Madame Du- 
devant, 1804-1876), 10, 18, 175, 229, 234, 
275, 298-303, 304, 

SAURIN (s6-riin’), Jacques (1677-1780), 
187, 153-157. 

Scott, Sir Walter, 13, 22, 26, 85. 

Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 248. 

Selden, John (‘* The learned”), 158. 

Seneca, 42. 

SEVIGNE (si-yén-yi’), Madame de, Marie 
de Rabutin-Chantal (1626-1696), 16, 85, 
105-117, 129, 320. 

Shakespeare, 19, 43, 53, 75, 77, 91, 174, 201, 
281. 

Smollett, Tobias George, 176. 

Socrates, 30, 227, 251. 

Sophocles, 64, 118, 127, 128, 291,310. 

ST AEL (-Holstein) (stéi-é1-ol-stan’), Anne 
Louise Germanie de (1766-1817), 18. 229, 
239-247, 248, 

Stanislaus (King of Poland), 237. 

St. John, Bayle, 48, 49, 50, 





ST. PIERRE, Jacques Henri Bernardin 
de (1737-1814), 228-235, 311. 

St. Simon, 159, 160. 

SWETCHINE(syetch-een’),Anne Sophie, 
(1782-1857), 811, 313,318. 

Swift, Dean, 35. 

Swinburne, Algernon Charles, °7, 276, 


Tacitus, 13, 129. 

Taine, H. (1828), 188, 286. 

Tasso, 208. 

Thibaud (té bd’), troubadour (1201-1255), 
12, 13. 

Thiers (te ér’), Louis Adolphe (1797-1877), 
320: 

Thucydides, 247. 

TOCQUEVILLE  (ték-veel’), Alexis 
Charles Henri Clerel de (1805-1859), 
191-199, 

Troubadour, 11. 

Trouvere, 11, 12. 

Turgot (tiir-gd’), Anne Robert Jacques 
(1727-1781), 238, 320. 


Urquhart, Sir Thomas, 30. 


Van Laun, H., 20. 

VAUVENARGUES (y5-ve-narg’), Luc 
de Clapiers, Marquis de (1715-1747), 64- 
66, 318. 

Villehardouin (vél-ar-doo-an’), Geoffroy 
(1165 ?-1213 ?), 18. 

Villemain (vél-man’), Abel Francois (1790- 
1870), 93. 

Virgil, 11, 14, 65, 127, 130, 206, 310, 311. 

Voiture (vwa-tiir’), Vincent (1598-1648), 16. 


VOLTAIRE (yol-tér’), Francois Marie 
Arouet de (1694-1778), 10, 17, 35, 43, 56, 
65, 100, 118, 124, 125, 126, 128, 152, 167, 
190, 199-212, 238, 239, 245, 248, 249, 285, 
311. 


Wall, C. H., 85. 

Walpole, Horace, 116, 

Warens (vié-ran), Madame de, 217, 218, 
220, 225. 

Washington, George, 250. 

Webster, Daniel, 141, 290, 


‘|| Wormeley, Katharine Prescott, 297, 300, 


302. 
Wright, Elizur, 69, 


Xenophon, 310. 
Young, William, 261, 





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